TY - JOUR
T1 - Investigation of the effect of metal foam characteristics on the PCM melting performance in a latent heat thermal energy storage unit by pore-scale lattice Boltzmann modeling
AU - Ren, Qinlong
AU - He, Ya Ling
AU - Su, Kai Zhi
AU - Chan, Cho Lik
N1 - Funding Information:
This work was supported by the key project of National Science Foundation of China (No. 51436007) and the National Natural Science Foundation of China (No. 51476125). We also thank the 111 Project (No. B16038).
Publisher Copyright:
© 2017 Taylor & Francis.
PY - 2017/11/17
Y1 - 2017/11/17
N2 - Latent heat thermal energy storage (LHTES) has many advantages such as high energy density and phase change at a nearly constant temperature compared with sensible thermal energy storage or chemical energy storage techniques. However, one of its major drawbacks is the low thermal conductivity of phase change materials (PCMs) which impedes the heat transfer efficiency. High thermal conductivity metal foams could be added into the LHTES to enhance the heat transfer speed. Under this case, the investigation of the effects of metal foam porosity and pore size on the melting process is essential for improving the heat storage capability of LHTES. In this article, a pore-scale modeling of melting process in a LHTES unit filled with metal foams is carried out by enthalpy-based multiple-relaxation-time lattice Boltzmann method. The quartet structure generation set is used to generate the morphology of metal foams. In addition, a Compute Unified Device Architecture (CUDA) Fortran code is developed in this work for executing highly parallel computation through graphics processing units. The melting process in the PCMs is investigated in terms of porosity, pore size, nonuniform metal foam, hot wall temperature, and initial subcooled temperature to optimize the design of LHTES filled with metal foams.
AB - Latent heat thermal energy storage (LHTES) has many advantages such as high energy density and phase change at a nearly constant temperature compared with sensible thermal energy storage or chemical energy storage techniques. However, one of its major drawbacks is the low thermal conductivity of phase change materials (PCMs) which impedes the heat transfer efficiency. High thermal conductivity metal foams could be added into the LHTES to enhance the heat transfer speed. Under this case, the investigation of the effects of metal foam porosity and pore size on the melting process is essential for improving the heat storage capability of LHTES. In this article, a pore-scale modeling of melting process in a LHTES unit filled with metal foams is carried out by enthalpy-based multiple-relaxation-time lattice Boltzmann method. The quartet structure generation set is used to generate the morphology of metal foams. In addition, a Compute Unified Device Architecture (CUDA) Fortran code is developed in this work for executing highly parallel computation through graphics processing units. The melting process in the PCMs is investigated in terms of porosity, pore size, nonuniform metal foam, hot wall temperature, and initial subcooled temperature to optimize the design of LHTES filled with metal foams.
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U2 - 10.1080/10407782.2017.1412224
DO - 10.1080/10407782.2017.1412224
M3 - Article
AN - SCOPUS:85038617361
SN - 1040-7782
VL - 72
SP - 745
EP - 764
JO - Numerical Heat Transfer; Part A: Applications
JF - Numerical Heat Transfer; Part A: Applications
IS - 10
ER -