Energy and exergy performance assessments for latent heat thermal energy storage systems

Latent heat thermal energy storage (TES) can be an efficient option to cater to fluctuating energy demands and at the same time to obtain a higher performance from the energy and exergy aspects. Latent heat TES storage performance is usually influenced by various operating conditions and design parameters during the energy/exergy stored and retrieved. The scope of investigation is to comprehensively review various useful techniques adopted in detail for energy and exergy performance enhancements, and provide the perspectives for researchers and engineers to design more efficient latent TES systems. Various influencing factors can be enlarged to include the heat transfer fluid (HTF) mass flow rate and inlet temperature, phase change material (PCM) melting temperature and number, additives for PCMs, storage unit dimension, heat exchanger surface enhancement, and sensible heating and sub-cooling, etc. The main perspectives and directions including heat transfer mechanism and optimized multiple PCM melting point are provided to enable further research.