Analyzing melting process of paraffin through the heat storage with honeycomb configuration utilizing nanoparticles

To intensify the charging rate of thermal storage, new honeycomb configuration has been utilized in this work. The various material were utilized for solid structure namely: Stainless steel (SS); Aluminum-6061-T4 (Al-6061) and pure aluminum (Al). The holes were filled with mixture of paraffin (RT82) and Al2O3 nanoparticles. To create various configurations of holes with honeycomb shape, the geometric factor (b2) has three levels and another geometric factor was calculated to reach the equal volume of paraffin in all geometries. Characteristics of NEPCM were measured based on homogeneous model. The two dimensional laminar melting process was simulated based on finite volume approach. The size of mesh and value of time step have been optimized to decrease the computing price and precision of code was tested with matching the data with exist published article. With decrease of b2, the thickness of honeycomb reduces and number of holes increases. When b2 = 1 mm, the required time decreases around 90.87% and 24.28% with changing the material from SS to Al and Al6061. With utilize of Al, the melting time decreases around 27.96% with reduce of b2. The lowest period is about 6.548 min which belongs to case with pure aluminum and b2 = 1 mm.