CFD Analysis of Melting of Paraffin Wax with Al2o3 & MGO Nanoparticles in Square Enclosure

Abstract

Thermal energy storage is considered advanced energy technology, and there has been an increasing interest in using this essential technique for the thermal applications such as heating, hot water, air conditioning, and so on. The selection of the TES systems mainly depends on the storage period required i.e. ., diurnal or seasonal. Economic viability, operating conditions, and the like. Paraffin waxes are cheap and have moderate thermal energy storage density but low thermal conductivity and, hence, require a large surface area. Thermal storage has been characterized as a kind of thermal battery. This study is based on variations of thermo-physical properties of Phase Change Material (PCM) due to dispersion of nanoparticles. This work focuses on CFD investigation of the melting of paraffin wax dispersed with two different metal oxide Alumina (Al2O3) & Magnesium oxide (MgO) that is heated from one side of square enclosure of dimensions of 20 mm × 20 mm. The integrated simulation system ANSYS Workbench 14.5 for the numerical study was used including mesh generation tool ICEM and FLUENT software. Dispersed nanoparticles in larger volumetric fractions show a rise in the heat transfer rate. The melting percentage is slightly greater using MgO as compared to Al2O3 nanoparticles.