Experimental and numerical study on melting of phase change materials in metal foams at pore scale

An experimental study on the melting behavior of phase change material (PCM) in metal foams has been carried out at the pore scale. Paraffin wax was used as phase change material, in which aluminum foams were embedded to enhance the heat transfer. The temperature field and the melting evolution of the PCM at the pore scale were studied using an infrared camera and an optical microscope, respectively. The experimental results indicated that the metal foam is capable of enhancing the solid-liquid phase-change heat transfer, mainly because of the thermal conduction in the metal matrix. It was observed that the effect of the metal structure on the heat transfer is significant during the melting of PCM. A thermal lattice Boltzmann model with doubled populations was implemented to simulate the two-dimensional melting of the phase change material in metal foams. The numerical results agree well with the experimental observations qualitatively.