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Ekkehard Lohse, Gerhard Schmitz
International Journal of Refrigeration, Volume 35, Issue 4, June 2012
Abstract
Phase Change Materials (PCM) are very reliable cooling devices. However their low thermal conductivity is a major drawback for the widespread use in technical applications. This paper presents an approach to design Composite Latent Heat Storages (CLHS) combining the PCM with an aluminum frame-structure for transport of thermal energy. These new designs require a generalized assessment taking varying compositions into account.
Thus different assessment parameters are presented based on material properties, heat storage composition and the transient thermal behavior. The material properties depend on the PCM, while the heat storage composition depends on the geometry and determines the systems weight. The transient assessment is based on FEM-simulations and shows the performance with respect to idealized reference heat storages. This allows the performance assessment of CLHS of different sizes and compositions with respect to important boundary conditions like volume or mass, that depend on the application.
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