Thermal Analysis of Thermal Energy Storage Systemwith Phase Change Material

Due to fast depletion of conventional energy sources and ever increasing demand of energy, many researchers started paying attention to renewable energy sources.Thermal Energy Storage (TES) is one of the key technologies for energy conservation and has recently been developed to a point where it can have a significant impact on modern technologies. The present work deals with the study of a spherical container, filled with spheres containing either paraffin wax or stearic acid as Phase Change Materials (PCM) and water occupying the space left between the spheres. The ANSYS is used for modeling the PCM inside the spheres with simple 2D model. Detailed thermal analysis simulations of the solid liquid phase change are performed. Simulations of the charging and discharging modes are performed and results obtained are compared against previous theoretical results. The results are compared for paraffin and stearic acid with different sizes of the spheres and a fin inserted in the sphere. It is observed that in these cases, the time taken to complete the phase change in the sphere changes as the size changes and paraffin takes less time compared to stearic acid. When a rectangular cross sectional copper fin is inserted into the sphere radially the time taken is reduced, hence output is increased.