Solid-Liquid Phase Change Simulation Applied to a Cylindrical Latent Heat Energy Storage System

D. Groulx[1], and W. Ogoh[1]

[1]Mechanical Engineering Department, Dalhousie University, Halifax, Nova Scotia, Canada
Published in 2009

One way of storing thermal energy is through the use of latent heat energy storage systems. One such system, composed of a cylindrical container filled with paraffin wax, through which a copper pipe carrying hot water is inserted, is presented in this paper. It is shown that the physical processes encountered in the flow of water, the heat transfer by conduction and convection, and the phase change behavior of the material can be modeled numerically using COMSOL Multiphysics.

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