Simulation of the transient behaviour of encapsulated organic and inorganic phase change materials for low-temperature energy storage

A numerical model was presented for the transient behaviour of rectangular macro-encapsulated PCM in both melting and freezing phases and was validated using published experimental data. Two PCMs of melting temperature in the range of 30 °C, calcium chloride hexahydrate and paraffin C18 have been studied and compared under various operational parameters. It was shown that paraffin C18 needs less time to melt and freeze completely compared to a similar storage block of inorganic CaCl2.6H2O but with lower energy storage capacity.