Department of Mechanical engineering

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Subject: search.filters.subject.Thermal energy storage

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Now showing 1 - 7 of 7
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    A comprehensive review on composite phase change materials for sustainable thermal energy solutions: Advances and barriers
    (Elsevier, 2025-10) Bhattacharyya, Suvanjan
    Composite Phase Change Materials (CPCMs) have gained significant attention for their potential in thermal energy storage (TES) due to their high latent heat capacity. These materials offer a promising solution for addressing global energy challenges, especially in renewable energy applications. This review summarizes recent advances in CPCMs, discusses existing challenges, and suggests future research directions. While phase change materials (PCMs) are key for thermal management due to their high energy density, they face limitations such as low thermal conductivity, leakage during phase transitions, and poor stability. To address these issues, additives like nanoparticles, expanded graphite, and polymers have been incorporated into CPCMs, improving thermal conductivity, stability, and energy storage efficiency. Research has shown that carbon-based nanomaterials can enhance thermal conductivity by up to 137% and improve thermal cycling durability. Innovative CPCM formulations, such as eutectic mixtures and hybrid composites, help overcome phase stability and leakage issues. Microencapsulation has also made strides, enhancing PCM containment and functionality, with dual-layer encapsulated CPCMs maintaining latent heat efficiency for over 200 cycles with minimal degradation. Nanomaterials like graphene and carbon nanotubes further reinforce thermal properties. CPCMs are widely used in solar thermal systems, building temperature regulation, and industrial waste heat recovery. In concentrated solar power systems, CPCMs have shown outstanding thermal storage capabilities and efficiencies, with some surpassing 90% solar-to-thermal conversion. Despite these advances, challenges remain, including high production costs, material degradation, and environmental concerns. Future research should focus on improving stabilization, scalability, and eco-friendly materials. The review concludes by highlighting research gaps and the potential of integrating CPCMs with smart technologies for dynamic thermal management, underscoring the need for cross-disciplinary strategies to optimize CPCM performance for broader adoption.
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    Preparation, thermal and rheological properties of hybrid nanocomposite phase change material for thermal energy storage
    (Elsevier, 2014-02) Parameshwaran, R.
    This paper presents the experimental investigation on the thermal properties and viscosity of the new organic ester phase change material embedded with the silver–titania hybrid nanocomposite (HyNPCM) with the mass proportions ranging from 0.1% to 1.5%. The HyNPCM embedded with the surface functionalized hybrid nanocomposite exhibited improved thermal conductivity from 0.286 W/m K to 0.538 W/m K, congruent phase change temperature (6.8 °C), high latent heat capacity (90.81 kJ/kg), substantial reduction in the supercooling degree (1.82 °C), thermal stability (191 °C) and chemical stability, while compared to the pure PCM. Experimental results reveal that, the freezing and the melting times of the HyNPCM were reduced by 23.9% and 8.5% respectively, when compared to the pure PCM. The increased mass proportion of HyNC resulted in the increased viscosity up to 3.89%, which suggests the existence of relative dependencies between the thermal properties and the viscosity of the HyNPCM. In total, the improved thermal properties and the heat storage potential of the HyNPCM has facilitated them to be considered as a viable candidate for the cool thermal energy storage applications in buildings without sacrificing energy efficiency.
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    Thermal Energy Storage Technologies for Sustainability Systems Design, Assessment and Applications
    (Elsevier, 2014) Parameshwaran, R.
    Thermal Energy Storage Technologies for Sustainability is a broad-based overview describing the state-of-the-art in latent, sensible, and thermo-chemical energy storage systems and their applications across industries. Beginning with a discussion of the efficiency and conservation advantages of balancing energy demand with production, the book goes on to describe current state-of-the art technologies. Not stopping with description, the authors also discuss design, modeling, and simulation of representative systems, and end with several case studies of systems in use.
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    Numerical simulation and parametric analysis of latent heat thermal energy storage system
    (Springer, 2020-09) Soni, Manoj Kumar; Bhattacharyya, Suvanjan
    This paper presents the numerical analysis of the transient performance of the latent heat thermal energy storage unit established on finite difference method. The storage unit consists of a shell and tube arrangement with phase change material (PCM) filled in the shell space and the heat transfer fluid (HTF) flowing in the inner tube. The heat exchange between the HTF, wall and PCM has been investigated by developing a 2-D fully implicit numerical model for the storage module and solving the complete module as a conjugate problem using enthalpy transforming method. A comparative investigation of the total melting time of the PCM has been performed based on natural convection in liquid PCM during the charging process. The novelty of this paper lies in the fact it includes convection in PCM and this investigation includes a detailed parametric study which can be used as a reference to design latent heat storage. The results indicate that natural convection accelerates the melting process by a significant amount of time. In order to optimize the design of the thermal storage unit, parametric study has been accompanied to analyze the influence of various HTF working conditions and geometric dimensions on the total melting time of the PCM. Another important feature considered in this work is the influence of the inner wall of the tube carrying the HTF on the entire melting time of the PCM. An error of around 7.2% is reported when inner wall of the tube is ignored in the analysis.
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    Numerical and experimental investigation of melting process in spherical pcm capsule used for low-temperature thermal energy storage systems
    (IOP, 2019) Srinivasan, P.
    The present work deals with the experimental and numerical investigation of melting process of phase change material used for low temperature thermal energy storage applications. Thermal energy storage is a good solution to bridge the gap between energy supply and energy demand. The unconstrained melting of paraffin wax having melting range of 570C to 610C was studied in simple spherical glass capsule. The objective of the subject work is to perform the experimental and numerical analysis of melting process in spherical capsule subjected to constant wall temperature. Ansys Fluent 18 is used for computation purpose. In experimental analysis, melting process was observed through visual capturing of interface between solid and liquid. Melting fraction and temperature at the centre of PCM capsule are monitored both experimentally and numerically. Good consistency in results were observed.
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    Numerical simulations and experimental investigations to study the melting behavior of beeswax in a cylindrical container at different angular positions
    (Elsevier, 2021-12) Srinivasan, P.
    Phase Change Materials (PCMs) are widely used in Latent Heat Thermal Energy Storage Systems (LHTES). This work aims to study the melting behavior of low-temperature phase change materials in cylindrical containers placed at different angular positions. Simulations were performed using ANSYS FLUENT by applying the enthalpy porosity model to analyze melting of beeswax in a cylindrical glass tube subject to an isothermal wall condition. The tube was placed at angular positions of 0°, 30°, 60° and 90° to the horizontal in order to study the effect of angular position on melting behavior. The simulation results were then validated by performing experiments and capturing images at regular intervals of time to track the solid-liquid interface. Image processing using MATLAB was performed on the captured images to study the variation of melt fraction as a function of time. It is observed that the experimental results were in good agreement with the simulations. From these studies, it was observed that the total melting time increases with the angle of tilt from 0° to 90° Initially, the melting progressed similar to the analytical solutions of one-dimensional phase-change heat transfer. As the melting continued, the experimental and numerical results deviated from the analytical solutions and the rate of melting increased due to convection effects. The results obtained in this study can be used to predict the melting behavior of PCMs in a solar flat plate collector kept at different angular inclinations. This result can be kept in mind while designing a thermal energy storage system to set an appropriate angle to match the cycle time of the system.
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    SWOT analyses of high-temperature phase change materials for thermal energy storage
    (Elsevier, 2020) Srinivasan, P.
    High-Temperature Latent heat thermal energy storage (HTLHTES) is gaining importance to store thermal energy at high temperature. Large storage capacity, compact system and near-isothermal operating conditions are some of the added advantages of LHTES over sensible heat thermal energy storage (SHTES). HTLHTES system uses phase change material (PCM) to store thermal energy. This research identifies the possible integration of HTLHTES in Concentrated Solar power (CSP) plant at high-temperature. Energy storage improves the dispatchability of CSP plants. At high temperature, thermal reliability and corrosion behaviour of PCM are significant challenges. A detailed analysis of state-of-art technology and recent advancement in the field of high-temperature PCM are presented while focusing on problems and its solutions. The report is summarised in strength-Weakness-Opportunities-threats (SWOT) table on parameters like thermophysical properties, material response and corrosion behaviour of PCM. SWOT results highlight the strength, weakness of PCM and opportunities and threats for future research of high-temperature PCM. At present, the authors of this study are investigating the phase change behaviour of Al-Si alloys through modelling and simulation. SWOT analysis of this alloy, when compared to other PCMs, is done to understand the applicability of the alloy as LHTES. In this study, the authors also proposed a thermophysical property-based newer approach to compare PCMs.