Numerical and experimental investigation of melting and freezing processes in phase change material storage

Phase change material (PCM) storages are used to balance temporary temperature alternations and to store energy in several practical application areas, from electronics to the automobile industry and also buildings. In current telecommunication electronics both portable and larger scale thermal transients that occur due to temporarily varying power dissipation are customary. The use of PCM heat storage to compensate for temperature peaks that may occur offer significant savings in time-dependent thermal management in the aforementioned products. The aim of this paper was to obtain physical validation of the numerical results produced using FEMLAB. This validation was obtained through a comparison of experimental data and numerical results. The numerical methods studied were an enthalpy method and an effective heat capacity method. An ensemble of experimental PCM storages, with and without heat transfer enhancement structures, was designed and constructed. The numerical predictions calculated with FEMLAB simulation software were compared to experimental data. Both numerical methods gave good estimations for the temperature distribution of the storages in both the melting and freezing processes. However, the effective heat capacity method, which used a narrower temperature range, dT=2 °C, was the most precise numerical method when the numerical results were compared to the experimental results.