Research on graphite fin shell and tube latent heat storage

Abstract

Latent heat storage is a method to store excessive energy and release on demand by the phase change process of a material. For fin manufacturing of a heat exchanger, graphite is a potential candidate due to its characteristic of high thermal conductivity, extreme light density and non-corrosiveness. In this research, a graphite fin shell and tube latent heat storage is produced and conducted experiments on different operating conditions. The phase change material in this research is paraffin wax (n-tetracosan). Otherwise, the effect of fin thickness on the thermal performance of the device is also considered. When increasing the inlet heat transfer fluid temperature from 50°C to 70°C, the total thermal resistance decreased 20%. And the thicker the graphite fin thickness from 1.0 mm – 1.5 mm and 2.0 mm, the higher the power per mass of 19-29%, respectively.