Heat Transfer Aspects of Using Phase Change Material in Thermal Energy Storage Applications

Innovative methods for providing sustainable heating and cooling through thermal energy storage (TES) have gained increasing attention as heating and cooling demands in the built environment continue to climb. As ener-gy prices continue to soar and systems reach their maximal capacity, there is an urgent need for alternatives to alleviate peak energy use. TES systems allow decoupling of energy production from energy utilization, both in lo-cation and in time. It is shown in this thesis that successful implementation of TES in the built environment alleviates peak energy load and reduces network expansion as well as the marginal energy production cost. This thesis analyzes phase change material (PCM) based TES systems in terms of material property characterization, numerical modeling and vali-dation of thermal storage, as well as case specific techno-economic feasibil-ity studies of system integration. The difficulties identified in latent heat TES design, such as heat transfer aspects, subcooling and identification o