The effect of porosity and Cu-nanoparticles on melting of Cyclohexane in porous cavity

Abstract melting of Cyclohexane-Cu nano-material in a porous square cavity is studied numerically in this paper. At first initial temperature of the cavity is Ti that is equal to melting temperature of nano-material,Tm ,. The horizontal walls are adiabatic. Suddenly the left wall's temperature has changed to Th>Tm . The effective parameters in this case are and which appear in the nondimensionalized equations. Nondimensionalized governing equations are obtained based on the Darcy model; a control volume approach is used for solving these equations. The effect of the variation of mentioned parameters are investigated on the heat transfer rate, fluid flow, isotherms and melting time of nano-PCM. The results show that changing of any parameters will be effective on increase or decrease of heat transfer rate and melting process time. For example variation of has high effect on melt fraction in cavity with time. The results show that melting of PCM is prolonged when nano-particles are added. the increases of the Ra increases the natural convection heat transfer and therefore increases the melting rate, and deforms the melting line.