Study of A Thermal Energy Storage System Using the Lattice Boltzmann Method

Abstract

Thermal energy storage (TES) systems are much preferred in many engineering applications, which have the ability to overcome the mismatch between energy supply and energy demand. TES can be used to store thermo-chemical, sensible, or latent heat or a combination of these. Among the three forms, latent heat thermal energy storage (LHTES) has grown considerably in importance over recent years as a promising alternative to traditional systems. These systems use phase change materials (PCM), in simple or cascade configuration, and store the latent heat of melting (charging process) and release it during solidification (discharging process). Among different configurations of LHTES systems, tube and shell heat exchangers represent a promising and simple design in high temperature PCM. In this paper, we present a new numerical study involving a tube and shell heat exchanger to evaluate the heat storage phenomena. A case study and numerical results are provided using the Lattice Boltzmann Method.