ISSN Online: 2688-7231
ISBN Online: 978-1-56700-478-6
Proceedings of the 24th National and 2nd International ISHMT-ASTFE Heat and Mass Transfer Conference (IHMTC-2017)
TAILORING THE THERMAL CONDUCTIVITY OF PARAFFIN WAX BY NANO - FILLERS FOR THERMAL STORAGE APPLICATIONS
要約
Thermal energy storage in the form of latent heat using
Phase change material (PCM) has been an area of research
for the last three decades. Paraffin wax is a more appropriate PCM for storing energy in the form of latent heat because of its favorable thermo-physical properties such as high density, specific heat and latent heat of fusion. However, its low value of thermal conductivity poses a continuous challenge in its large-scale deployment. In this work, the thermal conductivity of paraffin wax is altered using Carbon Nano-tube (CNT) as
Nano-fillers, aiming to improve the thermal conductivity of
paraffin wax. The CNT were stirred in liquid wax at 70 °C with CNT doping level 0.05, 0.1 and 0.2 wt%. The
experimental results show the thermal conductivity of tailored paraffin wax increases as CNT loading contents. A
mathematical model of melting and solidification of paraffin
wax was developed for knowing the effect thermal conductivity on charging and discharging of energy in tailored paraffin wax. C++ code was written to carry out the numerical simulation of system. Mesh was generated using commercial software Ansys ICEMCFD. Hybrid upwind scheme was used for solving non-linearity of convective term and diffusion term using central approximation. System of algebraic equations was computed using BICGstabs. Simulation results were validated against experimental data and we found good agreement with experimental data. Post-validation, parametric studies were carried out. The simulation results show charging and discharging time decrease as thermal conductivity increases.