TY - JOUR
TI - Heating and cooling capacity of phase change material coupled with screen mesh wick heat pipe for thermal energy storage applications
AU - Palappan Rajendran Ramesh
AU - Pasupathy Avadaiappa Pillai
AU - Asirvatham Lazarus Godson
AU - Tharayil Trijo
AU - Wongwises Somchai
JN - Thermal Science
PY - 2020
VL - 24
IS - 2
SP - 723
EP - 734
PT - Article
AB -  The thermal performance of a phase change material-heat pipe system is  experimentally analysed using acetone as heat pipe fluid in a heat load  range of 10-50W at different flow rates of the condenser coolant. The  evaporator of the heat pipe is enclosed in a chamber which filled with a  phase change material or water. Heat inputs are applied at the evaporator of  the heat pipe through the phase change material or water. In this study, the  heat retention as well as cooling time of the phase change material/water  are estimated at different heat loads and flow rates of condenser coolant.  Similarly, the thermal resistance, evaporator and condenser heat transfer  coefficients are also estimated at different heat loads. It is observed that  the phase change material takes more time during heating and cooling cycles  to reach the steady state temperatures and the temperature values reached  during heating are also higher for phase change material compared to water.  The use of phase change material enhances the thermal storage capacity and  shows a maximum enhancement of 200% in heat retention time compared to water  at 50W. Moreover, a maximum enhancement of 63.6% is observed in the steady  state temperature of the phase change material compared to water. Similarly  thermal resistance, evaporator wall temperature and heat transfer  coefficients of the heat pipe also vary for phase change material and water.  The experimental results indicate that phase change material or water can be  used in this combined system depending upon requirement of thermal storage  or electronics cooling.