Performance Analysis of a Phase Change Material in Cooling process: A CFD Study on a Flat Plate

Resumen

Today, although technical studies have successfully contributed to enhancing the energy efficiency of many industrial and residential systems, there is still much work to be done to achieve the energy transition and the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). Energy storage is a fundamental necessity for optimizing the use of available energy. In this context, Phase Change Materials (PCMs) stand out as a potential game-changer because they can absorb/release large amounts of energy within small temperature intervals. However, their implementation involves complex aspects of heat transfer, which are often encountered, especially during the charging and discharging processes (phase transition). This study proposes the Computational Fluid Dynamics (CFD) simulation of the charging and discharging process of a PCM under the operating conditions of a refrigeration chamber. The chosen geometry for the case study was a flat plate, given its advantages in analysis and subsequent implementation in refrigerators. To assess the plate's performance during the charging and discharging process, working fluids (water and PCM) and operating conditions were adopted from the literature. The results obtained from the CFD analysis, for both water and PCM, exhibit good agreement in predicting the plate's charging and discharging times,xx with only a 1% temporal difference. Within the same time frame, the CFD simulation predicts better PCM performance compared to water, aligning with reported values. The PCM's melting process is 85% slower than that of water, leading to water quality values of 0.64 compared to 0.1 for the PCM.