Packed Bed Latent Heat Storage
Application ID: 76181
Thermal energy storage units are used to accumulate thermal energy from solar, geothermal, or waste heat sources. The simplest units are built from water tanks, often found in households, where the solar energy is stored as sensible heat. The thermal capacity of these tanks can be further increased by including latent heat, which gives rise to latent heat storage (LHS) units. Typically, LHS tanks contain spherical capsules filled with paraffin as phase change material. This example models the flow through a packed-bed storage tank, and it includes the effects of heat transfer with phase change and local thermal nonequilibrium while charging the LHS unit.
This model example illustrates applications of this type that would nominally be built using the following products:
however, additional products may be required to completely define and model it. Furthermore, this example may also be defined and modeled using components from the following product combinations:
The combination of COMSOL® products required to model your application depends on several factors and may include boundary conditions, material properties, physics interfaces, and part libraries. Particular functionality may be common to several products. To determine the right combination of products for your modeling needs, review the Grille des Spécifications and make use of a free evaluation license. The COMSOL Sales and Support teams are available for answering any questions you may have regarding this.