Enhancement of Thermal Energy Storage System By Using Nanofluids (Al2O3, CuO)

Abstract

Research avenues found not only that the fossil fuels upturn critical factors- greenhouse gas emissions and fuel prices-but also that these are the main driving forces behind efforts for the effective utilization of various types of renewable energy resources. Of these, solar energy is one of the types of renewable energy resources, which can be used to various applications like solar water heating, solar cooking, solar pesticide sprayer, and solar power grass cutter etc. Nowadays solar heating applications are gathering much market attention, and phase change materials (PCM) are used to store the energy in the form of latent heat is increased, because a large quantity of thermal energy is stored in the small volume. In present work, Al2O3 and CuO were added in 0.02% and 0.05% and 0.08% volume concentration into the base fluid (water) to enhance its thermal performance. An experimental set-up is designed, fabricated and commissioned to collect thermal performance data on the thermal energy storage tank. In this experiment spherical capsule is used which contains phase change materials (PCM) as Paraffin wax. Experiments were carried out with base fluid and nanomixed base fluid to ensure the enhancement in heat transfer.