Investigating and Modeling of Simultaneous Charging and Discharging of a PCM Heat Exchanger

The performance of the simultaneous discharging and charging of a horizontal shell and tube heat exchanger filled with phase change material in the shell side was investigated. The temperature field was obtained and values of the solid-liquid interface were calculated. Finite difference modeling scheme was developed for validating the obtained result. The effects of the simultaneous operation time wise temperature profile shows more advantages for the phase change material heat exchanger performance. The obtained operation cycle charging time of the phase change material still indicates less heat transfer resistance along with reduced heat loss potentials. Moreover, less margin of difference from 0.1 - 0.2 °C/min for rate of temperature increase means the Stable-Transient-Period is independent of the varied heat fluxes. Obtained average mean absolute error values indicate a good agreement between the experimental and modeling result.