Numerical Simulation on Melting Behavior of Phase Change Materials in a Thermal Storage Vessel using Moving Particle Semi-implicit Method

Abstract

Heat supply technologies such as a solar heat utilization or a low exergy waste heat are receiving attention as an alternative heat source to fossil fuels. For the effective utilization of such energy resources, development of a latent heat storage system is expected. The purpose of this study is to represent an unsteady melting phenomenon in a latent heat storage tank and to establish an effective numerical analysis for evaluating the thermal characteristics in the heat storage tank. A numerical analysis was conducted on the effects of the arrangement of phase change materials in the heat storage tank and the flow conditions of the heat exchange medium on the heat transfer behavior. An algorithm based on MPS (Moving Particle Semi-implicit) method, which is a kind of particle method, was adopted for the building the numerical analysis model. As a result of this study, melting analysis model based on the MPS method, consistently calculated the melting behavior in the heat storage tank, and it is also found that the influence of the flow rate condition of the ambient fluid is small on the melting behavior of the phase change material.