Application of graded phase change materials for solar energy inter-seasonal storage heating and thermal storage characteristics

Abstract

Abstract In this paper, firstly, the heat transfer characteristics of the stepped phase change accumulator are studied, and the location of the solid-liquid phase interface is determined by the phase fraction in a fixed grid scheme, while the phase change heat transfer process is simulated using Fluent. Secondly, for the phase change heat transfer problem, the enthalpy-porosity method in the Solidification/Melting model is used to treat the solid-liquid mixed paste region of the phase interface as a porous media region, and the evaluation system is constructed in terms of heat storage and discharge efficiency, heat storage, and heat recovery efficiency. Then the mathematical model, boundary conditions and solution parameters of the stepped phase change heat accumulator are set, and the data analysis of the effect of the pool height-to-diameter ratio on the heat storage in the solar inter-seasonal storage heating system is carried out by using ANSYSCFD software. The results show that the heat storage of the system also shows an overall increasing trend with the increase of the pool height-to-diameter ratio, and the heat storage of the system increases faster when the height-to-diameter ratio increases from 0.2 to 1.0 in sequence, and the heat storage of the system increases less when the height-to-diameter ratio changes between 0.9 and 1.8, and basically tends to be stable. This study realizes the graded heat storage and graded heat use of solar energy, which is useful for the research of solar heat supply and heat storage.