Transient Response of a Latent Heat Storage Unit: An Analytical and Experimental Investigation

An analytical and experimental investigation of the transient thermal response of a latent heat storage unit is presented. Emphasis is placed on characterization of an entire storage unit rather than a single constituent storage element. In the analysis, two coupled governing partial differential equations that describe the model are derived and solved numerically. In the experimentation, a baffled shell and tube type heat exchanger was fabricated to provide data for a preliminary evaluation of the model. The experimental unit used water as the shell side HFT and poly(ethylene oxide) as the PCM contained within glass tubes. A comparison of experimental and analytical results shows that the analysis predicts somewhat conservative results.