THERMAL SCIENCE

International Scientific Journal

Sivakumar Kalaiselvam

,

Kanchipuram R. Sureshkumar

,

Vijeykishoor Sriram

STUDY OF HEAT TRANSFER AND PRESSURE DROP CHARACTERISTICS OF AIR HEAT EXCHANGER USING PCM FOR FREE COOLING APPLICATIONS

ABSTRACT
Free cooling is the process of storing the cool energy available in the night ambient air and using it during the day. The heat exchanger used in this work is a modular type which is similar to the shell and tube heat exchanger. The shell side is filled with Phase Change Materials (PCM) and air flow is through the tubes in the module. The modules of the heat exchanger are arranged one over other with air spacers in between each module. The air space provided in between the module in-creases the retention time of the air for better heat transfer. Transient Computational Fluid Dynamics modeling is carried out for single air passage in a modular heat exchanger. It shows that the PCM phase transition time in the module in which different shape of fins is adopted. The module with rectangular fins has 17.2 % reduction in solidification compared with the plain module. Then steady state numerical analysis is accomplished to the whole module having the fin of high heat transfer, so that pressure drop, flow and thermal characteristics across the module and the air spacers are deter-mined for various air inlet velocities of 0.4 to 1.6 m/s. To validate the computational results, experiments are carried out and the agreement was found to be good.
KEYWORDS
phase change materials, thermal energy storage, modular heat exchanger, free cooling, energy efficient PCM
PAPER SUBMITTED: 2013-05-31
PAPER REVISED: 2013-12-16
PAPER ACCEPTED: 2014-07-27
PUBLISHED ONLINE: 2014-09-06
DOI REFERENCE: https://doi.org/10.2298/TSCI130531096K
CITATION EXPORT: view in browser or download as text file
THERMAL SCIENCE YEAR 2016, VOLUME 20, ISSUE Issue 5, PAGES [1543 - 1554]
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Study of heat transfer and pressure drop characteristics of air heat exchanger using PCM for free cooling applications

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