A study of a packed-bed thermal energy storage device: test rig, experimental and numerical results

This paper presents the experimental set-up built at the DIMCM of Cagliari University to study a thermal energy storage (TES) system based on alumina beads freely poured into a carbon steel tank using air as heat transfer fluid. The system is instrumented with several thermocouples to detect axial and radial temperature distribution as well as reservoir wall temperature. Experimental temperature distribution along the storage system was compared with the numerical ones obtained by a two-phase one dimensional Schumann model. Numerical results show good agreement with the experimental results if thermal properties are considered as temperature dependent and the experimental temperature profile at the top of the bed is used for simulations