Analysis of the Charging and Discharging Performance of a New Wavy Cylindrical Shape Capsule

This paper presents a numerical study on the constrained melting of a phase change material inside various capsule containers, using water and HDPE (High Density Polyethylene) as a PCM and a capsule material, respectively. The computations are based on an iterative, finite-volume numerical procedure that incorporates a single-domain enthalpy formulation for simulation of the phase change phenomenon. Using the enthalpy method, various capsule configurations, such as a capsule from E company, an isochoric cylinder capsule, an equivalent diameter sphere capsule, and an isochoric sphere capsule, are used to investigate the effect of capsule configurations on the charging and discharging performance. A transient three-dimensional model is used for each case. The simulation results show that the capsule from E company results in a higher melting and solidification rate of the PCM, than the other capsule configurations considered in this research.