An experimental study on heat transfer characteristics of paraffin wax in horizontal double pipe heat latent heat storage unit

• Natural convection dominates melting process and conduction dominates solidification process.
• Increasing the inlet temperature from 70 to 74 °C, total melting time is decreased by 31%.
• Heat transfer coefficient is higher during melting process than the solidification process.
• The melting/solidification front moves in the flow direction of HTF for the horizontal orientation module.

An experimental study is conducted to investigate the melting and solidification processes of paraffin wax as a phase change material (PCM) in horizontal double pipe heat latent heat storage unit. The present work on phase change process includes study of temperature variations along the axial distances in PCM, determination of heat transfer coefficient as well as the heat flow rate. A series of experiments was conducted to investigate the effect of increasing the inlet temperature and the mass flow rate of the heat transfer fluid (HTF) both on the charging and discharging processes of the PCM. The experimental results show that the PCM melts and solidifies congruently, and the melting front moves from the left to right side of the PCM container whereas the solidification front moves from right to the left along the axial distances in the PCM container. The results indicate that natural convection dominates the melting process in the liquid phase due to buoyancy effects. On the other hand, the solidification process is dominated by conduction. The flow rate and inlet temperature of the HTF in the experiment range has a significant effect on the phase change processes. The results also indicate that the heat transfer coefficient between the HTF and the PCM was affected by the Reynolds number more during the melting process than during the solidification process. Heat flow rate during the melting and solidification process increased by 25% and 11%, respectively, in the case of increase or decrease by 2 °C of the inlet HTF temperature. The results of this study show that by increasing the inlet water temperature from 70 °C to 74 °C, total melting time can be decreased by 31%.