Experimental study of solidification of paraffin wax in solar based triple concentric tube thermal energy storage system

This paper addresses an experimental investigation of a solar based thermal energy storage system to meet current energy demand especially for milk industry in Tamil Nadu, India. A solar based energy storage system has been designed to study the heat transfer characteristics of paraffin wax where it is filled in the middle tube, with cold heat transfer fluid flowing outer tube, inner tube, and both tubes at a time during solidification process in a horizontal triple concentric heat exchanger. In this study, main concentrations are temperature distributions in the energy storage materials such as paraffin wax during solidification process and total solidification time. Three heat recovery methods were used to solidify paraffin wax from the inside tube, outside tube, and both tubes methods to improve the heat transfer between heat transfer fluid and phase change materials. The experiment has been performed for different heat transfer fluid mass-flow rates and different inlet temperatures and predicted results shows that solidification time is reduced