Numerical study of PCMs melting process in cylindrical cavity

Several residential, commercial and industrial applications have their efficiency increased when a thermal energy storage system is incorporated. The PCMs (Phase Change Materials), due to their high latent heat of fusion, are materials that represent a viable alternative to the implementation of thermal energy storage systems. This paper presents a numerical study of RT (Rubitherm Technologies GmbH) PCMs family fusion process in cylindrical cavities. The study was conducted through a CFD "("Computational Fluid Dynamics) numerical simulation, with ANSYS Fluent software. The numeric model adopted is two-dimensional and has been validated with numerical and experimental results of literature, achieving a good approximation. For PCMs here studied, increasing the temperature from 10 "degrees C" to 20 "degrees C" and 10 "degrees C" to 30 "degrees C", above the phase change temperature, for liquid fractions between 0.4 and 0.8, the average reduction of fusion time is approximately 55.8% and 71.8 %, respectively.