Melting enhancement in a shell-and-tube latent heat storage unit with staggered fin-foam synergistic configuration

Latent heat thermal energy storage has been demonstrated as a promising energy storage technique in concentrating solar power plants, but the application of that is restricted by low storage efficiency. To address this issue, an innovative design of staggered fin-foam synergistic configuration is proposed in the current study. A three-dimensional shell-and-tube model is built to numerically investigate the effect of the new design on melting enhancement. Compared with foam unilateral configuration, straight fin-foam synergistic configuration reduces the full melting time by 58.67 %. By adopting the segmented staggered configuration and increasing the number of segments, performance is further improved. Optimal segmented staggered fin-foam configuration with four segments performs best and further reduces the full melting time by 13.18 %. Staggered fin-foam synergistic enhancement breaks the limitation of marginal improvements in unilateral enhancement and enables underutilized heat in the sector between adjacent fins to be further conducted. The outlet temperature of heat transfer fluid is further reduced by 23.55 K, achieving more efficient heat utilization. A comprehensive economic index is developed for economic assessment. The fin-foam configuration exhibits better economic benefits compared to the foam unilateral configuration. The stagger fin-foam configuration emerges as the optimal choice with a relatively low cost of processing and pumping power.