Investigation of Heat Transfer Enhancement of a Planar Latent Heat Thermal Energy Storage

Latent heat thermal energy storage (LHTES) has been recognized as one of the the best options of thermal energy storage (TES) options due to its higher energy storage capacity.It has been used in various industrial application and building air-conditioning systems.Meanwhile, fractal flow design has been widely adopted to improve heat transfer performance inside LHTES.The fractal flow design is expected to give better heat transfer efficiency as compared to conventional S-shaped pattern.Nevertheless, limited studies has been reporting the performance of planar LHTES with fractal fluid passages.This study is therefore conducted to investigate the heat transfer performance of planar LHTES with various fluid passage design.An experimental set-up with various fluid passage designs such as conventional serpent-shaped (S), diamond fractal-shaped (D), and rectangular fractal-shaped (R) is developed.The experimental condition is carried out under variation of heat transfer fluid (HTF) inlet temperature at a range of 70�90°C (above PCM melting temperature) with constant mass flow rate of 0.01 kg/s.The results revealed that the R-shaped design has the highest overall TES efficiency compared to D-shaped (14.97 lower) and S-shaped (83 lower) design respectively.This study can provide a basic reference for fluid passage configuration in planar LHTES. © 2023, Institute of Technology PETRONAS Sdn Bhd.