Enhancement of latent heat thermal storage using natural convection deflection

Thermal energy storing technologies are a new approach in reducing energy costs, managing demand side, pick shaving and increasing portion of renewable energies in energy production. In spite of lots of advantages of thermal energy storage techniques, there are still major challenges in the path of Latent heat thermal storages (LHTS). One of the challenges is the low charge and discharge rate of heat transfer in LHTS. In the current study charging rate of a shell and tube LHTS is numerically studied by enthalpy-porosity numerical technique. Exact positioning of the heat transfer tubes and thermal fins has great impact on the natural convection flows. In this study effect of increasing heat transfer tubes (HTF), lower positioning of tubes in four tubes configuration, changing upper tubes distance and using interconnected axial fins has been studied and compared to each other. Moreover, velocity and temperature contours have been analyzed. Results demonstrated that increasing number of tubes could not solve the slowing rate of charging at the end of process and tubes need to be positioned lower in the tube. In addition, it was observed that heat transfer axial fins can decelerate convection flows and develop stationary areas inside the shell. Prediction results revealed by lowering tubes and closing them to the shell wall, introduced in this article, it is possible to decrease charging time of 0.95 of storage capacity to one fourth of similar time in a one tube LHTS.