ZHANG Zhongbin, ZHU Zhehao. Melting Assessment on the Up-under Multistage Design for a Novel Latent Heat Thermal Energy Storage Unit[J]. 2025, 45(15): 6012-6024.
DOI:
ZHANG Zhongbin, ZHU Zhehao. Melting Assessment on the Up-under Multistage Design for a Novel Latent Heat Thermal Energy Storage Unit[J]. 2025, 45(15): 6012-6024. DOI: 10.13334/j.0258-8013.pcsee.240276.
Melting Assessment on the Up-under Multistage Design for a Novel Latent Heat Thermal Energy Storage Unit
To solve the problem of poor melting consistency for the horizontal shell-and-tube latent heat thermal energy storage (LHTES) unit. An up-under cascaded arrangement structure is proposed
and a three-dimensional LHTES unit model (Case 1
Case 2-n
Case 2-N) is established in the paper. Performance evaluation indices such as phase change process
complete melting time
average thermal energy storage rate
and exergy performance of the three models are compared and analyzed
and the superior performance of the novel structure is expounded in detail. The results illustrate that Case 2-N has a shorter period of melting time and a higher average thermal energy storage rate than Case 2-n and Case 1. The complete melting time of Case 2-N reduces by 36.2% and 19.4% compared with Case 1 and Case 2-n
and the average thermal energy storage rate improves by 20.1% and 11.8% compared to Case 1 and Case 2-n. Moreover
complete melting uniformity and temperature field uniformity also have a noticeable improvement for Case 2-N compared to Case 2-n and Case 1. The complete melting time difference of the upper and lower sector regions for Case 2-N is only 4.6%. In addition
Case 2-N has advantages in minimizing entropy generation number and improving exergy efficiency. This paper can provide direction guidance and theoretical reference for the high-efficiency operation of horizontal shell-and-tube LHTES units.