Experimental Investigation of Solar Paraffin Wax Melting Unit Integrated with Phase Change Heat Energy Storage by Using Phase Change Material

An Experimental study on phase change heat energy storage system (PCHES) using Erythritol as a phase change material (PCM) has been carried out. Simple and popularly used domestic solar thermal applications make use of direct radiation energy of the sun for cooking, liquid heating, drying and many others as it is the remarkable potential renewable energy source. Effective utilization of such energy can be made with the development of economically operating phase change heat energy storage (PCHES) which is elemental in spanning the gap between supply and demand of energy. PCHES that stores the latent heat of fusion of phase change materials is provocative because of its huge storage density. An integrated Solar wax melting unit with phase change thermal energy storage using ethylene glycol as heat transfer fluid(HTF) to transfer the heat from parabolic dish collector to the wax melting unit is investigated. In this experimental setup, the paraffin wax container is kept in an insulated heat retrieval unit. Heat stored during the daytime by the PCHES is utilized in the off sunshine hours.