TY - JOUR
T1 - Thermal and economic evaluation of phase change material volume fraction for thermocline tank used in concentrating solar power plants
AU - Elfeky, K. E.
AU - Mohammed, A. G.
AU - Ahmed, N.
AU - Lu, Lin
AU - Wang, Qiuwang
N1 - Funding Information:
This work is financially supported by the National Natural Science Foundation of China (Grant No. 51536007 ), the Fundamental Research Funds for the Central Universities ( xjj2018199 ), the National Natural Science Foundation of China (NSFC) / Research Grants Council ( RGC ) Joint Research Scheme (Grant No. 51861165105 ), the Foundation for Innovative Research Groups of the National Natural Science Foundation of China (No. 51721004 ) and the 111 Project ( B16038 ).
Funding Information:
This work is financially supported by the National Natural Science Foundation of China (Grant No. 51536007), the Fundamental Research Funds for the Central Universities (xjj2018199), the National Natural Science Foundation of China (NSFC) / Research Grants Council (RGC) Joint Research Scheme (Grant No. 51861165105), the Foundation for Innovative Research Groups of the National Natural Science Foundation of China (No. 51721004) and the 111 Project (B16038).
Publisher Copyright:
© 2020 Elsevier Ltd
PY - 2020/6/1
Y1 - 2020/6/1
N2 - The current paper investigates the phase change material (PCM) volume fraction (VF) effect on the thermal and economic behavior of a three-layer thermocline thermal energy storage (TES) tank system which is used in concentrating solar power (CSP) plants. The one dimensional transient dispersion-concentric (D-C) scheme is applied to calculate the phase change inside each capsule. Using MATLAB software, the numerical model equations have been figured out, and the current numerical results have been verified. Four different scenarios have been created to investigate the effect of PCM-VF on the thermal behavior and economic feasibility of the TES tank. The results described that the overall efficiency and the cost of capacity for all cases in order from the case (1) to the case (4) are 80.77%, 64.32%, 73.43%, 85.58%, and $45.37/kWh, $60.49/kWh, $46.28kWh, $38.58/kWh, respectively. Furthermore, case (4) demonstrates the storage capacity of 149 kWh/m3, which is 7.21%, 19.42%, and 15.78% higher than case (1), (2), and (3), respectively. In the comparative study, the results showed that case (4), which has higher VF for the bottom PCM layer, indicates that it is the most viable option of all the studied cases due to its best performance and relatively low cost.
AB - The current paper investigates the phase change material (PCM) volume fraction (VF) effect on the thermal and economic behavior of a three-layer thermocline thermal energy storage (TES) tank system which is used in concentrating solar power (CSP) plants. The one dimensional transient dispersion-concentric (D-C) scheme is applied to calculate the phase change inside each capsule. Using MATLAB software, the numerical model equations have been figured out, and the current numerical results have been verified. Four different scenarios have been created to investigate the effect of PCM-VF on the thermal behavior and economic feasibility of the TES tank. The results described that the overall efficiency and the cost of capacity for all cases in order from the case (1) to the case (4) are 80.77%, 64.32%, 73.43%, 85.58%, and $45.37/kWh, $60.49/kWh, $46.28kWh, $38.58/kWh, respectively. Furthermore, case (4) demonstrates the storage capacity of 149 kWh/m3, which is 7.21%, 19.42%, and 15.78% higher than case (1), (2), and (3), respectively. In the comparative study, the results showed that case (4), which has higher VF for the bottom PCM layer, indicates that it is the most viable option of all the studied cases due to its best performance and relatively low cost.
KW - Concentrating solar power plants
KW - Cost analysis
KW - Performance analysis
KW - Three-layers tank
KW - Volume fraction
UR - http://www.scopus.com/inward/record.url?scp=85089174452&partnerID=8YFLogxK
U2 - 10.1016/j.apenergy.2020.115054
DO - 10.1016/j.apenergy.2020.115054
M3 - Journal article
AN - SCOPUS:85089174452
SN - 0306-2619
VL - 267
JO - Applied Energy
JF - Applied Energy
M1 - 115054
ER -