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Journal of Building Performance Simulation

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Experimental and numerical investigation of phase change materials with finned encapsulation for energyefficient buildings
Kalaiselvam Siva , Marcel Xavier Lawrence , G. R. Kumaresh , Parameshwaran Rajagopalan & Harikrishnan Santhanam
a b a a a b b

Centre for Nanoscience and Technology, Anna University, Chennai

Department of Mechanical Engineering, Anna University, Chennai, India Published online: 11 May 2010.

To cite this article: Kalaiselvam Siva , Marcel Xavier Lawrence , G. R. Kumaresh , Parameshwaran Rajagopalan & Harikrishnan Santhanam (2010) Experimental and numerical investigation of phase change materials with finned encapsulation for energy-efficient buildings, Journal of Building Performance Simulation, 3:4, 245-254, DOI: 10.1080/19401491003624224 To link to this article: http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/19401491003624224

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Journal of Building Performance Simulation Vol. 3, No. 4, December 2010, 245254

Experimental and numerical investigation of phase change materials with nned encapsulation for energy-ecient buildings
Kalaiselvam Sivaa*, Marcel Xavier Lawrenceb, G.R. Kumareshb, Parameshwaran Rajagopalana and Harikrishnan Santhanama
a

Centre for Nanoscience and Technology, Anna University, Chennai; bDepartment of Mechanical Engineering, Anna University, Chennai, India (Received 22 May 2009; nal version received 14 January 2010) This article investigates the phase change characteristics of nned encapsulations in heating, ventilation and air conditioning (HVAC) system for buildings. The eect of various n congurations on moving interface position and complete solidication time was investigated for spherical and cylindrical geometries. Total solidication time was reduced by 6572% on incorporating ns for dierent congurations. The slotted n arrangement proves to be more eective with 72% reduction in charging time. Experiments were conducted and the results were found to be in good agreement with the numerical analysis. The proposed predictions are very helpful in developing improved latent heat thermal energy storage used in buildings with large storage capacities, thus improving the overall energy eciency of the building. Keywords: phase-change heat transfer; phase change materials; solidication; melting; nned encapsulation; numerical solution

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1.

Introduction

Heating, ventilation and air conditioning (HVAC) in buildings consume a large quantum of energy, which in turn increases the fossil energy consumption and also pollutes the environment. Hence, research related to energy-ecient buildings is of great importance. Thermal energy storage (TES) system is an economical energy storage technique, where the energy stored during part load operations was reused during the peak load hours. This would greatly help in improving the energy eciency of the building. The use of TES systems has gained momentum in recent years in several thermal applications, e.g. active and passive solar-based water heating and air conditioning. Various technical aspects related to the utilization of phase change materials (PCMs) for TES systems were discussed (Veerappan et al. 2009). Latent heat thermal energy storage (LHTES) is a type of TES system which uses PCM to store energy (Zhang et al. 2007). There are various ways in which the PCMs are used for thermal storage in buildings (Khudhair and Farid 2004). Of which, the latent heat storage in PCMs is very attractive because of its high energy storage density and its isothermal behaviour during the phase change processes. PCMs could be integrated into building walls and they would absorb the solar energy,

thereby reducing room temperature. This eect leads to reduced cooling loads or, in the absence of an air conditioner, to a signicant increase in comfort (Zhang et al. 2004, Schossig et al. 2005, Fang and Zhang 2006). Wallboards which are used to provide a light building envelope could be incorporated with PCMs. A computer simulation and its experimental validation were done using test cells (Ahmad et al. 2006). The PCMs used in these test cells were paranlled granulates. In recent years, the TES system combined with the free cooling principle nds its application in modern buildings. The TES system in free cooling mode stores the energy in the form of coolness from the outdoor air during the night and provides cooling during the day having on-peak load conditions. Free heating is another principle wherein the solar radiation during the day is stored to provide heat during the night (Butala and Stritih 2009). Night ventilation with PCM packed bed storage is another modern concept in which air ventilation during the night is used to store the coolness in PCMs, which is used to cool air during the day (Yanbing et al. 2003). The methods of introducing PCM in LHTES are direct incorporation, immersion and encapsulation. Encapsulation of PCM of dierent forms and sizes is

*Corresponding author. Email: kalais_s@yahoo.com

ISSN 1940-1493 print/ISSN 1940-1507 online 2010 International Building Performance Simulation Association (IBPSA) DOI: 10.1080/19401491003624224 http://www.informaworld.com

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K. Siva et al. possible congurations of PCM encapsulations for developing energy-ecient LHTES for building air conditioning applications. 2. Numerical analysis The heat transfer characteristics of the entire system can be studied by analysing one of the encapsulations in the tank. Numerical analysis of the tank containing all the encapsulations would be dicult; hence a particular encapsulation is selected for numerical analysis. In the literature, the transient heat and mass transfer problems associated with this type of solidication and melting are known as moving boundary problems or Stefan problems (Kalaiselvam et al. 2008). Because of the unavailability of analytical solutions for these non-linear and parabolic type phase change problems, there are various numerical methods such as xed grid (Ekrlick 1958), variable grid (Douglas and Gallie 1955, Murray and Landis 1959), adaptive grid generation (Gupta 1974) and enthalpy or total heat (Shamsundar and Sparrow 1975, Voller and Cross 1983, Tacke 1985) that must be used to model the transport phenomenon. In the present analysis the following assumptions were made: (1) The eect of natural convection within the melt is negligible and can be ignored. (2) The PCM behaves ideally i.e. phenomenon such as property degradation and supercooling do not occur. (3) Thermophysical properties are dierent for solid and liquid phase but they are independent of temperature (Sharma et al. 2009). The assumption (3) was included in this study because the numerical analysis carried out addressed the solidication problem and the heat transfer mechanism in the PCM was considered to be of pure conduction, therefore, there are no eects due to convection in the liquid phase. By including the assumption (3), the equivalent thermophysical properties of PCM was considered which helps reduce the complexity in modelling the PCM for the numerical analysis. Likewise, the thermophysical properties of the PCM were considered dierent for the two phases. But the density was considered to be the same for both phases in order to take into account of convection eects due to temperature change, which may otherwise lead to complexity in obtaining solutions for the PCM in numerical simulation. Usually the enthalpy methods are used in most phase change problems where a solidliquid interfacial region would be present between the phases.

identied to be more feasible. The general containments are rectangular slabs, cylindrical containers and spheres. The use of nned encapsulation instead of normal encapsulation would enhance the heat transfer processes. Ismail et al. (2003) simulated a storage system composed of spherical capsules lled with PCM placed inside a cylindrical tank. They used a simplied transient one-dimensional model based on dividing the tank into a number of axial layers whose thickness is equal to or larger than the capsule diameter. The heat transfer process that takes place during the charging and discharging of a PCM plays a major role in the eciency of the LHTES. The use of Lessing rings inside the PCM encapsulation was found to enhance the heat transfer process during solidication (Velraj et al. 1999). Emman et al. (2007) investigated the thermal conductivity enhancement of PCMs in latent heat storage system. Lessing rings are thin walled, hollow, cylindrical structures with a partition and are made of steel. The authors have conducted experiments on the paran wax (PCM) by considering the solid and liquid phases thermal conductivities. To enhance the thermal conductivity it was embedded with aluminium powder. The size of the aluminium powder particles was 80 mm. It was found that the charging time was reduced signicantly by adding aluminium powder to wax. The use of internal ns in slab encapsulation was studied experimentally and it was found that eect of natural convection is greatly reduced by the ns (Richard et al. 1980). Phase change energy storage devices have an inherent limitation due to the insulating properties of the PCMs. Usually, the PCM at the proximity to the encapsulation inner surface region would solidify or melt rapidly than at the centre. Also the propagation of heat from the inner surface to the centre of the encapsulation lled with PCM may not be uniform, since the solid layer already formed near the inner surface would act as an insulating layer to the subsequent PCM layers. Thus, in order to overcome this limitation as well as to enhance the solidication and melting phenomenon in PCM, a new nned PCM encapsulation for storing and releasing the energy is introduced in this article. In this study, ns located inside the cylindrical and spherical PCM encapsulations have been investigated for achieving enhanced heat transfer which helps to improve the charging and discharging characteristics of the PCM considerably. Numerical models for predicting the charging and discharging characteristics of the latent heat TES system for the two congurations were developed. The developed numerical model was veried with the experimental results and the agreement was found to be good. This study also helps to predict the best

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Journal of Building Performance Simulation Accordingly, the governing equations used in this analysis for the PCM are: Continuity : Momentum : m @ rui 0 @ xi 1 3. Experimental methodology

247

@ @ rui rui uj @t @ xj 2

@ 2 ui @P rgi Si @ xi @ xj @ x i

  @ @ @ @T 0 0 rui h k Energy : rh @t @ xi @ xi @ xi

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where Si is the momentum source term, ui is the velocity component and xi is a Cartesian coordinate. The term specic enthalpy is the summation of sensible enthalpy change due to phase change (gL). The sensible enthalpy is expressed by ZT
Tref

h0s

h0ref

Cp dT

g 0 if

T < TS ; g 1 if

if

T > TL ;

g T TS =TL TS

TS < T < TL :

The source term Si in the momentum equation is given by Si Agui 5

where A(g) is the porosity function dened by Brent et al. (1988). While developing an analytical model, normally it is assumed that no phase change occurs instantaneously. Numerical simulation in this study considered liquidus and solidus states of the PCM during phase change process. The encapsulation models were designed using GAMBIT and meshed with tetrahedron element volume with 10 nodes. Numerical simulation of the heat transfer process that took place in a LHTES with nned encapsulations was done using FLUENT 6.3 and the results were analysed. The resistance created by the encapsulation material was neglected. The eects of encapsulation thickness and conduction were considered to make the analysis more accurate. Furthermore, the numerical model was veried using experimentation and the simulation results were compared with the experimental values.

Experimental work was performed on the nned encapsulated LHTES system to estimate the solidication and melting characteristics of the PCM material for energy storage in the building air conditioning application. The experimentation helps to verify the numerical model and simulation results for the nned encapsulated LHTES system. In the comfort cooling applications, the range of melting temperature of PCMs could be approximately between 5 and 108C (He and Setterwall 2002). The PCM selected in this study exhibited a low transition temperature of 280.5 K (Tyagi and Buddhi 2007), which helps to initiate and progress the solidication and melting processes at a faster rate. The selection of this PCM also satises the temperature conditions required for the cool storage application in buildings. Furthermore, in building HVAC applications, the supply and return temperature dierential of the circulating heat transfer uid could be adjusted using series chiller unit combinations. This would actually enable the heat transfer uid to satisfy the transition temperature criteria of the PCM for achieving good charging and discharging processes. The PCM was encapsulated inside the cylinder made of high density polythene with thermophysical properties of density as 948 kg m73, specic heat of 1800 J kg71 K71, thermal conductivity of 0.532 W m71 K71. The cylinder has a diameter of 0.04 m, a height of 0.15 m and a wall thickness of 1 mm. The ns were arranged at the periphery of the inner cylindrical surface in perpendicular directions. It was xed on the encapsulation in such a way that it protrudes into the encapsulation. Two dierent congurations were analysed which are shown in Figure 1(a) and (b). The total length of the ns used in both the cases was 0.10 m, where one n was segmented into three shorter ns (0.03, 0.04, 0.03 m) which could be termed as

Figure 1. (a) Meshed model of cylinder with ns. (b) Meshed model of cylinder with slotted ns.

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K. Siva et al. A heat transfer uid is passed through the tank to store or remove energy from the PCMs. The experimental setup consists of an insulated tank and a constant temperature bath as shown in Figure 3. The encapsulation (cylinder/sphere) lled with formic acid was placed inside the tank. The constant temperature bath was provided with a heating coil and a cooling coil in order to heat or cool the circulating uid based on the thermal load conditions existing in the building. The water with additive ethylene glycol (40:60% by weight) was used as heat transfer uid. The temperature of the uid can be varied between 750 and 708C. The encapsulation was maintained under constant wall temperature through the circulation of this external uid from the bath to the insulated tank. Temperature controller with electrical stirrer was used in both the tank and bath to maintain the uniformity of temperature. J-type thermocouples of accuracy +0.58C were employed to quantify the temperature in the system, and the sensors were connected to a data acquisition system. The estimated uncertainty in the temperature measurement was +1.98C and the resolution of digital temperature controller was 0.18C. Initially both temperature controllers (tank and bath) were set at the same temperature. Also thermocouples are evenly spaced and xed at several locations in the tank to maintain a constant temperature boundary condition. 3.1. Solidication analysis The solidication analysis was carried out by having the PCM inside the encapsulation initially at a temperature of 300 K, much above the fusion temperature

slotted n arrangement. The width and thickness of each n are 0.015 m and 1 mm, respectively. The n material is made of copper (r 8954 kg m3, Cp 383 J kg71 K71, K 386 W m71 K71). The spherical capsule has a diameter of 0.07 m and a wall thickness of 1 mm. The dimensions of the sphere and cylinder were selected, such that they contain the same volume of PCM. The ns were arranged inside the spherical capsule in perpendicular directions as shown in Figure 2. The n material used was the same as that of cylindrical encapsulation. The n height is limited to 0.06 m extending to a length of 0.03 m on both sides from the centre such that the total surface area of the ns used in all three congurations was the same (0.012 m2). Basically, the LHTES has a storage tank which contains a large number of PCM encapsulations.

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Figure 2.

Meshed model of sphere with ns.

Figure 3.

Experimental setup.

Journal of Building Performance Simulation of the PCM. The PCM used was formic acid which has a melting point of 280.5 K, with conductivity and specic heat of 0.272 W m71 K71 and 2180 J kg71 K71 respectively. Its solidus and liquidus temperatures were found to be 280.8 K and 282 K, respectively. The latent heat of fusion for this PCM is 245 kJ kg71. The walls of the encapsulation were kept at 253 K which is below the fusion temperature of the selected PCM. Solidication progressed from the surface of the sphere and propagates through the liquid phase or mushy region. The solidication front across various time intervals was monitored by creating a plane at the centre of the cylinder. The inner region shows the liquid portion of the PCM and the outer portion shows the completely solidied region of the PCM. The intermediate stages represent that they are in the two-phase region. The empty encapsulation and the encapsulation lled with PCM were weighed accurately before conducting the experiment. Before placing the encapsulation inside the tank it was set to the required temperature using the controller. After 10 min, the encapsulation was removed from the tank and the liquid and solid phases of the PCM were separated and weighed. Based on this the amount of solidication was determined. The experiment was conducted once again from initial conditions and now the encapsulation was removed after 20 min and the same procedure was followed. This process is repeated until complete solidication of the PCM is achieved. This method of experimentation is found to be accurate (Chan and Tan 2006) and hence it is followed. 3.2. Melting analysis

249

values are graphically represented. From the experiment, the time taken for complete solidication of the cylindrical encapsulation without ns was found as 6.66 h and the time predicted by the numerical model was 5.83 h which is about 12.5% lower than the experimentally measured value. The complete melting time predicted by the numerical model was about 11.2% lower than the experimental value. Similar solidication and melting experiments were conducted for other congurations and the results are tabulated in Table 1. The deviations obtained were in the range of 1013% which is acceptable. Figure 4 compares the numerical prediction of the liquid fraction at various time intervals during solidication and the experiment for cylindrical encapsulation without ns. It is inferred that the experimental values were found close to the numerical predictions. The movement of solidication front

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Table 1. melting.

Experimental time for complete solidication and % deviation from numerical analyses 12.51 11.1 10.34 12.60 10.98 11.28 10.64 12.23 11.2

Conguration Solidication Plain cylinder Cylinder with ns (10 cm) Cylinder with slotted ns (3-4-3 cm) Plain sphere Sphere with four ns Melting Plain cylinder Cylinder with ns (10 cm) Cylinder with slotted ns (3-4-3 cm) Sphere with four ns

Total time (h) 6.66 4.38 3.4 12.58 3.74 2.43 1.56 7.51 1.18

The melting analysis was carried out by maintaining the PCM initially at 273 K. The initial temperature was kept much below the fusion temperature of the selected PCM and that would make the PCM completely solidify. The walls of the encapsulations were maintained at 323 K and hence melting starts from the outer surface. Liquid front would not be formed instantaneously rather a mixture of solid liquid region would be formed initially which later results in complete melting. 4. Results and discussion

The solidication and melting characteristics of the PCM were numerically as well as experimentally investigated and the results are presented. The results related to numerical model analysis were compared with the experimental results. A deviation of 10% was expected to achieve between the simulation and the experimental values. The simulation and experimental

Figure 4. Comparison of experimental and numerical analysis of solidication of cylinder without ns.

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K. Siva et al. portions were slightly tilted. Figure 6 shows the same for cylindrical encapsulation with ns. The solid crystals formed at the vicinity of the ns are clearly visible. The solidication front position at a particular instant is represented in Figure 7. The time taken for complete solidication of cylinder with long ns was

inside the cylindrical encapsulation is shown in Figure 5. It is evident that the actual front movement was similar to that of the numerical prediction at various instants. In Figure 5(a)(c), it is realized that in numerical prediction during solidication the liquid portions were formed exactly at the centre of cylinder where as in the experimentation the liquid

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Figure 5. Solidication front of cylinder without ns at various time intervals.

Figure 6. Solidication front of cylinder with slotted ns at various time intervals.

Journal of Building Performance Simulation 3.9 h compared to 5.83 h for the cylinder without ns. Thus, a reduction of 33.2% in total solidication time was achieved in this n conguration. Since copper (n material) is a good conducting material, it helps in achieving the external temperature at the central axis of the cylinder at a faster rate. This helps in solidication at the centre of the cylinder much earlier even before some of the radial portion gets solidied. It is also inferred that the ends of the cylinder consumed more time to solidify even after the rest of the cylinder was completely solidied. The solidication front position for the slotted nned conguration is shown in Figure 8. The slotted n conguration helps in avoiding such problem by having a conduction heat transfer through slotted n and also having better distribution of heat over the entire length of the encapsulation. The slotted n conguration with shorter ns required 3.05 h to solidify completely. Liquid fraction during various time intervals was compared for the above three congurations and is depicted in Figure 9. At any instant, the liquid fraction of the cylinder with slotted ns was less than the other two congurations.

251

Figure 7. Centre plane of cylinder with longer ns during solidication.

The solidication front position at various time intervals is shown in Figure 10. The total solidication time for spherical capsule was found to be 11 h. The solidication front of sphere with ns is shown in Figure 11. It is inferred that the total solidication time for sphere with four ns arranged peripherally was 3.33 h. This gives 70% reduction in solidication time because the ns aid in solidication of the inner core of the sphere at a faster rate. The tips of the ns attained the external wall temperature at faster rate enabling the centre of the sphere to solidify at the same time as the outer walls. The time taken for complete solidication of various congurations for the same volume of PCM and same surface area of ns used is tabulated in Table 2. It shows that sphere without ns consumed most time for complete solidication of 11 h. Maximum heat transfer was attained by the cylinder with slotted n conguration. Similar results obtained for melting are shown in Table 3. Based on the result, it is evident that the slotted n conguration has the least possible time of all the congurations which is 51% less when compared to the spherical encapsulation without ns. The liquid front movements for all the congurations were monitored and it is clear that with the presence of ns, PCM at the centre gets melted initially and the liquid front propagates from both the centre and the outer surface thereby reducing the total melting time. The PCM being encapsulated with ns in a cylindrical conguration greatly reduced the time of solidication and melting while compared to a spherical conguration. The results indicate that, by using the cylindrical nned encapsulation conguration, the energy eciency of the thermal storage system could be greatly improved which proves to be advantageous while applied to the building air conditioning application. Hence, it could be concluded that the present study is helpful in determining the

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Figure 8. Centre plane of cylinder with slotted ns during solidication.

Figure 9.

Comparison of three cylindrical congurations.

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K. Siva et al.

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Figure 10.

Solidication front of spherical encapsulation.

Figure 11.

Solidication front of sphere with ns.

Journal of Building Performance Simulation

Table 2. Comparison of total solidication time of various congurations. Total solidication time (h) 5.83 3.9 3.05 11 3.33 % reduction when compared with empty sphere 47 64.5 72.27 70.7

253

Conguration Empty cylinder Cylinder with ns (10 cm) Cylinder with slotted ns (3-4-3 cm) Empty sphere Sphere with four ns

conguration shows 72.27% reduction in total solidication time and for melting it is 51% of the same volume of PCM. Hence, this high reduction in solidication and melting time makes the best choice for PCM congurations. Furthermore, based on the results obtained the assumptions stated in the present numerical model analysis were proven valid. Passive cooling systems equipped with nned PCM encapsulation would help in increasing the capacity of the system. As the solidication rate is more, it can derive more energy from the environment during the night. Acknowledgements

Table 3. Comparison of total melting time of various congurations. % reduction when compared with empty sphere 67.27 78.79 84.09 84.09

The authors gratefully acknowledge Anna University and DST FIST for providing the facilities available to perform this study.

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Conguration Empty cylinder Cylinder with ns (10 cm) Cylinder with slotted ns (3-4-3 cm) Empty sphere Sphere with four ns

Total melting time (h) 2.16 1.4 1.05 6.6 1.05

Nomenclature
Cp H h href hs k T specic heat (J kg71 K71) satent heat of fusion (kJ kg 71) specic enthalpy (kJ kg71) reference enthalpy (kJ kg71) sensible enthalpy (kJ kg71) thermal conductivity (W m 71 K71) temperature (K)

Greek symbols
g m r liquid fraction dynamic viscosity (kg m71 s71) density (kg m73)

solidication and melting characteristics of the PCMs under two distinct types of congurations, thereby it provides a possible way to identify the best choice for PCM congurations as applied to the building latent TES systems. 5. Conclusion For the analysed geometries lled with the same volume of PCM, cylinder provides a better encapsulation than a sphere. Cylinder has 38% more surface area than sphere thereby giving 47% reduction in complete solidication time. The dimensions of the selected cylinder were such that the radius is not large as it would lead to increase in solidication time. Hence selection of conguration plays a vital role in TES systems. Reduction in charging time can be achieved by placing ns inside the encapsulations such that it protrudes to the centre, thereby aiding better heat transfer process. With the presence of ns, centre of the encapsulation reaches the external temperature at a faster rate than the radial portions of the encapsulation. Cylindrical encapsulation with slotted ns has proved to be the most ideal conguration in TES applications. Slotted ns placed in cylindrical

Subscripts
L m s liquidus state melting solidus state

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