Effect of Fin Location on the Latent Heat Storage: A Numerical Study

Latent heat thermal energy storage (LHTES) utilizing phase change materials (PCMs) is an appealing approach for the industrial waste heat recovery. However, due to the PCMs' low thermal conductivity, the heat transfer enhancement methods like inserting metal fins have been widely adopted to fasten the PCMs' melting. This paper numerically investigates the effect of the single fin location on the PCM's melting process in a rectangular LHTES unit. The melting fraction contours and evolution curves under the three different fin locations were presented for the comparative analysis. The experiment data from one literature was applied to validate the numerical model and good agreement was found between the numerical results and the experimental data. A series of two-dimensional transient numerical simulations with three different fin locations were then carried out. It was found that the fin location would affect the natural convection process and thus generating the different PCM's melting speeds. Besides, the fin at the bottom location has the best heat transfer enhancement performance, reducing 3.6 % melting time than the top fin location case. What's more, the effect of fin location becomes more significant when locating at the bottom half of surface. It was concluded that the fin location could be optimized to improve the overall latent heat storage efficiency.