Abstract
Experimental and analytical investigations were performed on a small stratified type water reservoir with the vertical water flow, which contained a large number of latent heat TES cylindrical capsules set horizontally to utilize both sensitive and latent heat. The reservoir was prepared, encapsuling the industrial paraffin as the latent heat PCM, and experiments were performed, concerning the characteristics of the reservoir for both charging and discharging processes of the thermal energy, measuring the time-dependency of the temperature distribution within the reservoir. Then, the physical model for the heat transfer phenomena within the reservoir was discussed and the approximate analytical method was proposed to predict the outlet water temperature response for the charging and discharging processes. It was also confirmed that the analytical results agreed with the experimental results within the satisfactory accuracies for practical purposes.
