Improving Efficiency of a Solar Water Heater Using PCM

One of the best devices which can be used to convert the solar energy into thermal energy is solar water heater (SWH). SWH applications mainly depend on efficient thermal energy storage system (TES). Thermal storage works like a thermal battery where, energy can be stored in the form of latent heat, sensible heat, or both. In this project, TES system with Phase Change Material (PCM) can be more concentration for SWH application, as they have high energy density compared with other materials which are used to store only sensible heat . Besides, it also improves the reliability and performance of the SWH system0. Phase Change Materials (PCM) seem to be one of the most best techniques that might lead to this high energy storage performance. A PCM is a material which stores or supplies heat at its melting/solidification temperature using its high thermal energy storage density per unit volume as a cause of its latent heat, which is higher than the sensible heat. It is possible to use the latent heat of solid-gas, solid-liquid and liquid-gas transformation, however, only the solid-liquid transformation is used due to its lower volume variation.