Mathematical Prospective of Latent Heat Storage System with CuO Micro Particle Enhancement

Energy consumption for room heating and cooling is a major crisis in several countries. The energy efficiency could be increased by storing the excess heat energy for using in various applications and heat recovery systems. Latent heat storage holds a major advantage of longer retaining ability than other conventional means. The phase change material selected for this study is paraffin wax as it is useful in high temperature storage. The embedment of metal oxides has proven to be more effective in increasing the thermal conductivity and heat storing ability. A specially designed cylindrical shell was employed along with the property enhancement of PCM by including copper oxide (CuO) micro particles. Temperature of water storage was studied at various positions inside the container. The storage efficiency was increased by 10.16% and the heat releasing rate was decreased by 21.37% for CuO-PCM. Overall, the heat storage efficiency of the setup was increased by 41.99% compared to the performance using water. By reducing the size of the heat storage medium, the volume of PCM required and cost could be reduced by 5%