Design of a PCM to air heat exchanger using dimensionless analysis: Application to electricity peak shaving in buildings

In this paper, a phase change material (PCM) to air rectangular heat exchanger is studied for an objective of electricity peak shaving. First, a set of dimensionless numbers are derived from physical equations to understand the storage device behaviour: 1/BiFo, Bi/St and Ste. Second, these numbers are used to select the PCM based on the thermophysical properties of the material. Finally, the storage device is pre-designed by a proper analysis of the remaining dimensionless numbers. With the methodology developed in this paper, it is possible to efficiently design solutions from the specification requirements of the storage system.