Numerical analysis on hot water storage tank integrated with phase change materials

The energy crisis is one of the biggest problems the world faces due to industrialisation, rapid growth, and rising living standards. Domestic water heating, which constitutes a significant share of the residential energy consumption, is an excellent application for utilising solar energy. Thus, the combination of solar collectors with Latent Heat Thermal Energy Storage System (LHTESS) has been employed to utilise solar energy more effectively, as this technology can provide a balancing function to match the variability in supply and demand, reducing the supply challenges for electricity. Computational fluid dynamic (CFD) has been proven to be an important mathematical tool for optimisation purposes; thus, it can be used to validate different design configurations. This study aims to conduct a numerical simulation using ANSYS/ Fluent to investigate the thermal behaviour of a phase change material (PCM) storage system integrated with a thermal solar collector and compare it with experimental data from the literature review. The good correspondence between the numerical simulation results and the experimental results validates the numerical model proposed to be used with confidence to evaluate the performance of the solar collector in different configurations. The configurations evaluated include different types of phase change materials, nanoparticles for enhancement. From the results obtained the integration of PCMs does not offer major benefits in terms of heat gains.