Numerical investigation on the thermal behavior of a Tubular-PCM-Enclosure: impact of HTF-inner tube location

The present paper summarizes a numerical study investigating the behavior of a phase change material PCM filling up a cylindrical container. The PCM is located between two tubes, the inner tube cares for the Heat Transfer Fluid HTF and it is proposed to produce a heat flux. The investigation focuses mainly on comparing the effect of changing the inner tube position, i.e., up, center, and down, in the melting process. Results showed that moving the inner tube downward leads to a decreased melting time and the rate of the thermal energy storage becomes better