Experimental Investigation and Prediction of Charging/Discharging Performance of Phase Change Material based Thermal Energy Storage Unit

The study presents the experimental and analytical investigation, which was carried out to evaluate the charging/discharging performance of phase change material (PCM) in the thermal energy storage (TES) unit. The experiments performed under different operating modes of the heat storage system, changing the inlet temperature and the mass flow rate of the heat transfer fluid (HTF). The calculated amount of thermal energy based on the partial enthalpy distribution provided by the manufacturer’s datasheet compared to that obtained from the experiments. Based on the experimental results, a three-dimensional response surfaces formed and a regression models obtained, which allow predicting the PCM charging and discharging performance.