Fundamental heat transfer processes related to phase change thermal storage media

Technical Report · Sat Mar 01 04:00:00 EST 1980

DOI:https://doi.org/10.2172/5576704· OSTI ID:5576704

Sparrow, E. M.; Ramsey, J. W.

Research on fundamental heat transfer processes which occur in phase-change thermal storage systems is described. Four research problems were investigated - two involving freezing and two involving melting. The freezing studies led to the discovery of new phenomena which should have a significant impact on the functioning of phase-change storage devices. It was found that under certain operating conditions, freezing can be drastically retarded and even terminated by natural convection. Under other operating conditions, the dominance of natural convection in the freezing process ultimately gives way to a freezing mode controlled by heat conduction in the solidified material. By taking account of geometrical and thermal symmetry, the relationship between freezing about a single vertical tube and about an array of vertical tubes was established. The melting studies were focused on determining quantitative data for the heat transfer coefficients in two basic phase-change systems. One of these is an array of horizontal tubes and the other is a single vertical tube. The experiments involved parametric variations of the heating rate and of the degree of subcooling of the melting solid.

• Research Organization: Minnesota Univ., Minneapolis (USA). Dept. of Mechanical Engineering
• Sponsoring Organization: USDOE Office of Basic Energy Sciences
• DOE Contract Number: AC02-79ER10343
• OSTI ID: 5576704
• Report Number(s): DOE/ER/10343--1
• Country of Publication: United States
• Language: English

Related Subjects

25 ENERGY STORAGE
250600* -- Energy Storage-- Thermal
CONVECTION
DATA
ENERGY TRANSFER
EQUIPMENT
EXPERIMENTAL DATA
FREEZING
HEAT TRANSFER
INFORMATION
MATERIALS
MELTING
NATURAL CONVECTION
NUMERICAL DATA
PHASE CHANGE MATERIALS
PHASE TRANSFORMATIONS
RESEARCH PROGRAMS
THERMAL ENERGY STORAGE EQUIPMENT