Low-grade heat collection from a latent heat thermal energy storage unit

  • Zhen Qin
  • , Swapnil Dubey
  • , Fook Hoong Choo
  • , Hongwu Deng
  • , Fei Duan

Research output: Chapter in Book/Report/Conference proceedingConference contributionpeer-review

Abstract

Thermal energy storage is widely employed in waste heat recovery. Phase change materials (PCMs) are a type of promising thermal storage (TES) approach featuring high energy stored or released during melting and freezing. In this study, a latent heat storage system is designed to collect the waste heat from hot air while its efficiency is experimentally investigated. The system consists of five cuboid chambers to store PCMs and six air channels to deliver the exhausted gas. Paraffin wax is selected as the tested PCMs and differential scanning calorimetry (DSC) is applied to calibrate its melting range and latent heat. In the experiments, the effects of average air velocities and inlet air temperature on the performance of the latent heat storage unit are experimentally investigated. The experiments show that the designed TES unit can store maximally thermal energy for near 4510 kJ within 250 min, while the latent heat occupies 15 % at fan speed 25 RPM and the heater power with 2 kW. It is indicated that increasing of air mass flow rate and increasing of air inlet temperature can improve the heat transfer performance. It is found that the temperature profiles in the freezing process are smoother than those in the melting process.

Original languageEnglish
Title of host publicationProceedings of the 15th InterSociety Conference on Thermal and Thermomechanical Phenomena in Electronic Systems, ITherm 2016
PublisherInstitute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers Inc.
Pages1248-1254
Number of pages7
ISBN (Electronic)9781467381215
DOIs
StatePublished - 20 Jul 2016
Event15th InterSociety Conference on Thermal and Thermomechanical Phenomena in Electronic Systems, ITherm 2016 - Las Vegas, United States
Duration: 31 May 20163 Jun 2016

Publication series

NameProceedings of the 15th InterSociety Conference on Thermal and Thermomechanical Phenomena in Electronic Systems, ITherm 2016

Conference

Conference15th InterSociety Conference on Thermal and Thermomechanical Phenomena in Electronic Systems, ITherm 2016
Country/TerritoryUnited States
CityLas Vegas
Period31/05/163/06/16

Keywords

  • Heat collection
  • Thermal energy storage
  • latent heat storage
  • phase change material
  • waste heat recovery

Fingerprint

Dive into the research topics of 'Low-grade heat collection from a latent heat thermal energy storage unit'. Together they form a unique fingerprint.

Cite this