Study of the thermal dynamic behavior of a rectangular enclosure with fins embedded in PCM

This paper investigates the behavior of a Thermal Energy Storage (TES) system with Phase Change Material (PCM) embedded in fins. A commercial Computational Fluid Dynamics software is used to study the behavior of the system. A validation of the numerical model is done by comparing the numerical results with the measured melting fraction as function of time, determined from measurement of the temperature fields, for two lengths of fins. A dimensionless number is suggested to analyze the effect of the fins on the heat transfer in the medium. This study presents some results on the evolution of the liquid fraction and the Nusselt number. Results show that although the small conductivity of the PCM, the convection and conduction play a key role in heat transfer, their importance depends on the length of the fins. Furthermore, some feature of the behavior of the system without fins have been conserved by analyzing the Nusselt number.