Improvement of cold storage efficiency with loading hybrid nanoparticles and utilizing porous media

Abstract

The purpose of current article is to develop a more efficient cold storage design by integrating hybrid nanomaterials and permeable foam. The container architecture features two sinusoidal walls containing water, with the addition of hybrid nano-powders to enhance conduction. Additionally, to account for radiation effects, a source term based on Roseland approximation is incorporated into the energy equation. The unsteady source terms for freezing are discretized using an implicit technique, and the model is solved using the Galerkin method. Grid configuration is adjusted based on the position of the solid front to ensure accurate simulation results. Verification against previous data demonstrates reasonable accuracy in the model outputs. The study reveals significant improvements in cold storage efficiency through the adoption of these techniques. Without any enhancements, the required storage time is approximately 1552.28 s. However, the integration of all three techniques results in a remarkable reduction of about 91.64 % in this storage time, emphasizing the substantial impact of the proposed design modifications. Specifically, the addition of hybrid nano-powders enhances the freezing rate by approximately 7.84 %, while saturating the medium with porous foam leads to a decrement in storage time of around 90.69 %. Furthermore, an increase in the radiation factor (Rd) by 1 leads to a notable improvement of approximately 20.02 % in cold storage efficiency.

Keywords

• Hybrid NEPCM
• Solidification
• Porous foam
• Mesh adaption
• Numerical approach