Nanoparticles favorable effects on performance of thermal storage units

Nowadays, the rise in the human population and consequently increasing demand for energy in different fields, have caused serious trouble for societies. Increasing energy demand necessitates the need to produce more energy, thus, the consumption of fossil fuels that are a form of non-renewable energy will be increased. Phase change materials as environments for storing heat have wide applications in storing solar energy. This energy source is clean, inexhaustible, and accessible. Its usage by humans varies based on circumstances such as geographical conditions, terrain, time variations, and cloud cover. Current article reports a comprehensive overview of TES technologies using PCM throughout discharging and charging. The purpose of current research is to scrutinize the used techniques for augmenting performance of TES for non-power plants and PCM applications. In addition, heat transfer enhancement using extended surfaces, encapsulation, different ways of augmenting the thermal features, and applying of multiple PCMs were scrutinized. Furthermore, a brief discussion on the recent articles on various fluids and nanoparticles has been presented. The results show that the paraffin was the most used PCM in the studies, and the most common unit was shell and tube heat exchanger. Results also indicate that addition of longitudinal fin is the most popular technique in TES units. •Solidification and melting of PCM have been scrutinized.•Effect of adding nanoparticles has been examined.•Both numerical and experimental approaches were considered.•Phase change process time declines with dispersing nanoparticles.