Experimental studies of phase change materials in a bubbling fluidized bed

Proceedings of: 14th International Conference on Fluidization: From Fundamentals to Products. Noordwijkerhout, Netherlands, 26-31 may 2013.The aim of this work is to experimentally study the behaviour of three microencapsulated PCM in a bubbling fluidized bed for thermal energy storage. Different experiments, heating and cooling the granular PCM with fluidizing air, are carried out with different superficial gas velocities. When achieving their phase change temperature two of the three materials present agglomeration. For this reason, the material flowability and wear resistance are studied by measuring the angle of repose and attrition, respectively. Nevertheless, the angle of repose does not seem to be influenced by the temperature of the material and the particle size distributions after the attrition tests indicate that the bed particles are just slightly smaller than the original ones.This work was partially founded by the Spanish Government (Project ENE2010-15403), the regional Government of Castilla-La Mancha (Project PPIC10-0055-4054) and Castilla-La Mancha University (Project GE20101662).Publicad