Heat transfer enhancement of phase change composite material: Copper foam/paraffin

Phase change materials (PCM) can store heat during the phase change process. Because foam metal is light-weight, has a large specific surface area and conducts heat well, we chose it as a test material. The phase change material paraffin was embedded in copper foam metal to form composite phase change materials. We constructed a platform to test the thermophysical properties of pure paraffin and the composite materials, and the paraffin and composite phase change materials were processed using numerical simulations to analyze their phase change process. For these simulations, the Fluent software with Solidification/Melting and Porous Zone model was used. The results showed that copper foam can effectively improve the internal heat transfer uniformity of paraffin, reduce the heat storage time of paraffin wax by 40%, and improve the relationship between the total phase transition time and the heating boundary temperature in the copper/paraffin composite phase change materials.