NATURAL CONVECTION-DRIVEN PHASE CHANGE INSIDE CYLINDRICAL ANNULUS

The convective heat transfer inside latent heat thermal energy storage systems governs the spatial and temporal variations and significantly depends on the tendency of density variation. For most fluids in nature, the density variation has a linear tendency, so the density reduces with increasing temperature. In contrast, water has a nonlinear behavior, and density variation has an inversion point near the phase change temperature. This peculiar behavior makes water's melting and solidification processes have a unique nature. The current study aims to develop an in-house code to analyze the natural convection-driven melting process within an annular gap and simulate melting behaviours of phase change materials with linear, paraffin, and nonlinear, water, density variations.