Development and comparative analysis of the modeling of an innovative finned-plate latent heat thermal energy storage system

• An innovative latent heat energy storage system is presented.
• Three simulation approaches are developed for the proposed system.
• An experimental procedure is set out for measuring the stored energy evolution.
• The three models are validated with the experimental results.
• The simplified numerical model offers the best velocity-accuracy balance.

This paper presents an innovative finned-plate latent heat thermal energy storage system for its integration in cogeneration systems. For optimization purposes it is very important to maximize the efficiency of the computational calculations. Therefore, three approaches are presented for the simulation of the same storage system: a numerical model, a simplified analytical one and a simplified numerical model.These three models are applied to the simulation of a prototype which has been tested experimentally by means of a test benchmark for storage systems. The simplified analytical and simplified numerical models are implemented by the definition of an effective heat transfer coefficient. From the comparison of the results it was concluded that the three approaches gives rise to a good agreement with the test results. However, the simplified analytical model fails to predict long configurations. On the other hand, the simplified numerical model presents very good results for every configuration, reducing the computational cost of the numerical model from several hours to minutes.