Acceleration the solidification process of cold-thermal storage/nanoparticles using finned container: A numerical study

Abstract

To expedite discharging rate, the curved container is equipped with fin in present study and base PCM (phase change material) was mixed with Al2O3 nano-powders. Galerkin based numerical approach is applied to model the mathematical model which includes two equations. The grid is adapted with the location of the solid front. The homogeneous mixture of nanomaterial has been utilized. The model is validated according to numerical published work. The solidification process primarily relies on pure conduction, a reasonably accurate approximation confirmed during the validation step using empirical data. Introducing nanoparticles expedites the process due to enhanced conduction capabilities. It is crucial to monitor the processing time, which has been meticulously recorded for each scenario. A comparative graph has been presented to illustrate this. Contours have been depicted at different time intervals to demonstrate the influence of loading additives on the system. As the diameter of nano-powders rises, the period alters from 2.19s to 1.8s and 2.28s. The discharging time for pure water is 2.48s which is reduced about 27.52% with loading nanoparticles.

Keywords

• Solidification
• Finned curved container
• Galerkin method
• Nanoparticles
• PCM