Applied Energy 179 (2016) 237–246

Contents lists available at ScienceDirect

Applied Energy
journal homepage: www.elsevier.com/locate/apenergy

Experimental characterization and simulation of a fin-tube latent heat

storage using high density polyethylene as PCM
Christoph Zauner a,⇑, Florian Hengstberger a, Mark Etzel a, Daniel Lager a, Rene Hofmann a,b, Heimo Walter b
a
AIT Austrian Institute of Technology GmbH, Energy Department, Sustainable Thermal Energy Systems, Giefinggasse 2, 1210 Wien, Austria
b
Vienna University of Technology, Institute for Energy Systems and Thermodynamics, Getreidemarkt 9/BA, 1060 Wien, Austria

h i g h l i g h t s

More than 50 polymers have been investigated regarding their use as PCMs.

Polyethylene, polyoxymethylene and polyamides turned out to be promising.

Thermal stability of PE over more than 1000 heating and cooling cycles was shown.

A PCM storage using 170 kg HDPE was built and characterized.

Excellent agreement between 3-d CFD simulations and experiments was achieved.

a r t i c l e i n f o a b s t r a c t

Article history: Polymers have rarely been used as storage materials in latent heat storages up to now. Thus, we system-
Received 13 April 2016 atically screened all polymers available on a large-scale, selected promising ones based on their theoret-
Received in revised form 20 June 2016 ical properties and experimentally tested more than 50 candidates. We found that polyethylene,
Accepted 29 June 2016
polyoxymethylene and polyamides are promising even as recycled material. Especially high density
Available online 6 July 2016
polyethylene (HDPE) turned out to be suitable as was shown by detailed thermophysical characterization
including more than 1000 heating and cooling cycles for INEOS Rigidex HD6070EA. We built a storage
Keywords:
with 170 kg HDPE and a total mass of 600 kg based on a fin-tube heat exchanger and characterized its
Latent heat storage
PCM
energy capacity, power characteristics and temperature profiles using a thermal oil test rig.
Polymer A 3-dimensional model was implemented in ANSYS Fluent achieving excellent agreement between
Experimental storage characterization experiment and simulation. By analyzing the internal heat transfer contributions, temperature distribu-
CFD simulation tions and flow conditions, we were able to propose an optimized design and operation for future polymer
latent heat storages.
Ó 2016 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

1. Introduction
Thermal energy storages are a vital means to increase the share
of intermittent renewable energies and to enhance waste-heat
recovery in industries with non-continuous processes and there-
fore they help mitigating CO2 emissions [1,2] by allowing for
demand side management and load shifting [3,4]. Because of their
high energy density and the much lower pressure than steam accu-
mulators or pressurized water tanks, latent heat storage above
100 °C are of particular interest. Many concepts and some demon-
⇑ Corresponding author.
E-mail address: christoph.zauner@ait.ac.at (C. Zauner).
URL: http://www.ait.ac.at (C. Zauner).
strators have been tested for concentrated solar power applications
[5–11]. Also there has been growing interest in the utilization of
latent heat storages in industrial processes either for waste heat
recovery or in combination with solar thermal collectors [12–16].
Even in solar cooling there have been investigations and demon-
strators for storages not only on the cold, but also on the hot side
of the cooling machine [17,18]. For various applications, different
phase change materials (PCMs) have been investigated and charac-
terized [19–22]. In most publications polymers have only been
considered as shape stabilizing or encapsulation material [23,24],
but not as PCM itself. Only a few authors investigated polyethylene
as storage material [25–31] but a systematic screening of all avail-
able polymers has not been performed. However, this material
class has some interesting advantages:

http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.apenergy.2016.06.138
0306-2619/Ó 2016 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.
238 C. Zauner et al. / Applied Energy 179 (2016) 237–246

Nomenclature

a thermal diffusivity (m2/s) Pr Prandtl number (–)

DH enthalpy (kJ/kg) Re Reynolds number (–)

roughness size (m)
k thermal conductivity (W/m K) Subscripts
l dynamic viscosity (kg/m s) al aluminum
q density (kg/m3) amb ambient
A surface area (m2) avg average
D diameter of tube (m) cond conduction
h convective heat transfer coefficient (W/m2 K) conv convection
L length of tube (m) cryst crystallization
m mass (kg) i inlet
Q heat (kW h) ins insulation
r radius (m) l latent
T temperature (°C) melt melting
t time (s) o outlet
v velocity (m/s) rad radiation
cp constant pressure specific heat (J/kg K) s sensible
m _ mass flow rate (kg/s) st steel
Q_ heat transfer rate (kW) vol volume
q_ heat flux (W/m2)
Gz Graetz number (–)

availability on a large industrial scale ensuring a high material
quality

material prize can be low, especially for commodity plastics

a professional recycling industry allows for further material cost
reduction and is beneficial for sustainability

many polymers can be produced from renewable biological
sources

different chemical and physical properties can be altered and
tuned by compounding additives into the raw polymer

many polymer processing techniques allow for different PCM
shapes, especially for form-stable polymers

much know-how for PCM development is available because
polymers are used in almost every industrial sector
Therefore, we performed a systematic investigation of all poly-
mers to identify the most suitable phase change material candidates.
Then we picked high density polyethylene because of its high
enthalpy, prize and large-scale available for a more detailed investi-
gation. We characterized the thermophysical properties over the
whole relevant temperature range and performed a thermal durabil-
ity test. Because the material is suitable in principle, we proceeded
with the design of a lab-scale prototype storage based on a fin-
tube heat exchanger similar to the work presented in [30,31], where
polyethylene PCM storages were developed for a solar-driven steam
jet ejector chiller plant. This storage was built and characterized on
our test rig. Also, we developed a 3-dimensional computer model,
which was used to investigate the heat transfer within the storage
in detail. The model was compared to the experiment and finally
used to propose design improvements for future storages. Finally,
we conclude and provide an outlook on our future work.
2. Experimental investigation
2.1. Polymers as phase change materials
In our screening we were looking for carbon based synthetic
polymers that can be used as phase change material in latent heat
storages. Because water tanks are already a mature and cheap
technology for low temperatures, we were only interested in poly-
mers with melting points higher than 80 °C. The PCMs should have
a high energy density and must be durable over the whole storage
service life. Thus, we formulated the following selection criteria:

it must be possible to repeatedly melt and crystallize the
polymer

the phase change enthalpy should be as high as possible

there should be a small difference between melting and crystal-
lization range

the enthalpy has to remain stable over many melting and crys-
tallization cycles
Polymers can be divided into two major groups: thermosets and
thermoplastics [32]. In thermosets, the individual polymer chains
are linked by covalent bonds which prohibit a repeated melting
and crystallization of the material. Thus, because of the first crite-
rion we are left only with thermoplastics. This class consists of
semi-crystalline and amorphous polymers. The latter ones do not
exhibit a phase change,1 which means that the only suitable class
of polymers are semi-crystalline thermoplastics. Although a higher
degree of crystallinity in a certain polymer type is usually associated
with a higher enthalpy, it turned out that not all highly crystalline
thermoplastics also have a high phase change enthalpy (e.g. PTFE,
PET and PBT can be eliminated therefore). The third criterion is
required in order to have a narrow operating temperature range of
the storages and was checked via differential scanning calorimetry.
Polypropylene was found to have a very high degree of subcooling
and was not considered furthermore.
We systematically screened all polymers available on a large-
scale, selected promising ones based on their theoretical properties
and experimentally tested more than 50 candidates (polymers and
polymer compounds) and found that the most promising classes
fulfilling the first three criteria are polyethylene (PE), poly-
oxymethylene (POM) and various polyamide types (PA).2 Concern-
ing the last criterion no suitable information could be found in the
literature or from material suppliers. Although there is plenty of
information available on polymer degradation, especially for
1
This is except of a glass transition, which however has a very low associated
enthalpy.
2
For more details, please refer to [33] or directly contact the corresponding author.
 C. Zauner et al. / Applied Energy 179 (2016) 237–246 239

mechanical properties under various environmental influences, only

few authors [28,30] performed cyclic melting and crystallization
tests similar to the conditions occurring in a PCM storage. Therefore
we could not further eliminate other polymers, but had to perform
these tests on our own. Due to its highest enthalpy and lowest mate-
rial prize, we started our analysis with PE as follows. Investigations
for POM and PA are under way and will be published later.
Among the different PEs screened, the candidate with the high-
est enthalpy was the high density polyethylene (HDPE) INEOS Rigi-
dex HD6070EA. Thus, this material was selected for further
analysis and for the development of the lab-scale storage.
In order to get reliable material data over the whole required
temperature range, we performed a thorough thermophysical
characterization. Using a differential scanning calorimeter (Net-
zsch DSC 404C) we analyzed the melting and crystallization behav-
ior for various heating and cooling rates, the coefficient of thermal
expansion with a dilatometer (Netzsch DIL 402C) and the thermal
diffusivity with a laser flash apparatus (Netzsch LFA 427). The mea-
surement results are summarized in Fig. 1, and Table 1, where the
thermal conductivity is calculated from k ¼ aqcp .
Fig. 1. Thermophysical data for HDPE INEOS Rigidex HD6070EA. The curves for
In most applications, there will be many charging and discharg-
thermal diffusivity and thermal conductivity are interpolated between solid and
ing cycles over the lifetime of the storage, where especially the liquid regions, indicated by the yellow box, as no measurements can be performed
phase change enthalpy must remain stable. Waschull et al. [28] within the melting range. The volume and density are normalized to their values at
investigated the aging of HDPE: 100 cycles in a DSC in air atmo- 20 °C. (For interpretation of the references to color in this figure legend, the reader
is referred to the web version of this article.)
sphere between 105 °C and 140 °C (100 h in total) and 1784 h
directly exposed to hot air or glycol (132 °C) were performed.
and connect the tubes such that they are all flown through in par-
The material remained stable in glycol and over 100 DSC cycles,
allel. As insulation we used 30 cm of mineral wool. The storage has
but degraded completely after 1784 h direct exposure to hot air.
a total length of 3.4 m and a weight of 370 kg without PCM. The
Özcan [30] investigated the aging of HDPE in an oven for up to
material properties of the fins and tubes were measured and are
30 cycles showing only minor degradation and in direct contact
summarized in Table 2.
with steam at 140 °C, which however destroyed the material.
In total, the storage was filled with 170 kg of HDPE pellets
Because heat and oxygen at the same time seem to be critical for
(Fig. 4). The viscosity of the polymer is quite high4 and the fin spac-
HDPE and in view of the fact that nitrogen overlays are technolog-
ing relatively small, which makes it hard to remove all air from the
ically proven and widely applied in many chemical industries as
PCM. Very slowly moving air bubbles could be observed when the
well as in sensible water or oil storages, we decided to perform
polymer was in its molten state (Fig. 5). Fig. 6 was recorded when
our aging tests under nitrogen atmosphere. We sealed the PCM
the storage was not completely filled, yet. The fins are slightly
in a steel crucible under nitrogen atmosphere and simulated
deformed due to the large thermal expansion occurring during melt-
repeated melting and crystallization in a DSC (Netzsch DSC 204
ing and crystallization, however not to a problematic extent. After
F1). The material was exposed to more than 1000 heating and cool-
several melting, crystallization and refilling cycles, the molten poly-
ing cycles between 80 °C and 160 °C with a heating and cooling
mer level was equal to the top edge of the heat exchanger. In the
rate of 10 K/min. The result is shown in Fig. 2 and indicates that
crystallized state the polymer shrinks, which leads to a lower filling
the material may actually stabilize around 90% of the initial
level and several voids as shown in Fig. 7.
enthalpy. However, more detailed investigations are necessary to
During the whole characterization campaign we completed
confirm this conjecture. It has to mentioned here, that the investi-
roughly 30 melting and crystallization cycles at ambient atmo-
gated compound was not specially optimized for such a thermally
sphere conditions. Fig. 8 shows the state of the HDPE after the
stressful application, but is just a commercially available grade
measurement campaign: at the surface the PCM degraded and
designed for caps, closures, cartridges, crates, pallets or pails pro-
became yellowish most likely due to oxidation reactions. However,
duced by injection and compression molding.3 However, in poly-
as can be inferred from cutting into the PCM, this degradation layer
mer industries, it is common practice to develop a dedicated
is only very thin and the bulk still looks intact.
chemical stabilizer system for a polymer employed in a very
demanding application. In our case this has yet to be investigated
and may then further improve long term stability. 2.3. Storage characterization

2.2. Storage design In order to characterize the storage we connected it to a ther-

The storage consists of an insulated steel container which
houses a fin-tube heat exchanger and HDPE as phase change mate-
rial. The heat exchanger consists of 301 parallel fins made of the
aluminum alloy AlMg2.5. The thickness of the fins is 0.25 mm
and the fin-to-fin spacing is 8 mm. The fins are attached to 72
tubes made of steel (1:0345), which are arranged in a staggered
geometry shown in Fig. 3. Two manifolds at opposing fronts of
the storage provide the storage connections to the piping system
3 5
INEOS Products Finder, http://www.ineos.com/Products?fs=hd6070ea, last
accessed 2016-03-08.
mostat (Lauda ITH350) and used Marlotherm SH as heat transfer
fluid. Inlet and outlet temperatures were recorded using Pt100 resis-
tance thermometers and the mass flow was measured using a
clamp-on ultrasonic flow meter (Flexim Fluxus F601). The tempera-
tures within the PCM were measured by mounting thermocouples in
four layers along the length-axis of the storage: right after the inlet,
at roughly 1=3 and 2=3 of the total length and close to the outlet.5 In
each layer five sensors were positioned as indicated in Fig. 3.
4
The melt flow index is 7.6 g/10 min at 190 °C and 2.16 kg load.
The exact distances from the first fin are 100 mm, 865 mm, 1632 mm and
2398 mm.
240 C. Zauner et al. / Applied Energy 179 (2016) 237–246

Table 1
Measured storage characteristics for a constant mass flow of 1.0 kg/s. The sensible energy stored was estimated according to Q ¼ mcp ðT charged  T discharged Þ for steel, aluminum and
PCM. The insulation was heated by an average of 15 °C. The latent part is the difference between the total energy, Q 2hours , and all sensible contributions. In the last column we
estimated the resulting PCM-enthalpy.

T discharged T charged Q 2hours qv ol qmass;PCM Q l;PCM Q s;PCM Q s;st Q s;alu Q s;ins DH

(°C) (°C) (kW h) (kW h/m3) (kW h/kg) (kW h) (kW h) (kW h) (kW h) (kW h) (kJ/kg)

85 175 27.0 92.7 0.159 12.7 10.6 2.9 0.4 0.5 268.4
95 165 23.6 81.1 0.139 12.4 8.2 2.3 0.3 0.5 261.6
105 155 19.3 66.3 0.114 11.1 5.9 1.6 0.2 0.5 235.8

Table 2
Material properties used in the simulations. Changes in density with temperature
have been neglected for all the materials, but the temperature dependence of the
thermal conductivity and the specific heat has been taken into account for the steel of
the tubes, the aluminum of the heat exchanger and the PCM. The values here are for
150 °C. Fig. 14 shows the cp ðTÞ curve of the PCM used in the simulation.

k (W/m K) q (kg/m3) cp (J/kg K) l (kg/m s)

Thermal oil Marlotherm 0.114 951 2030 1.724  103
SH
Aluminum AlMg2.5 133.6 2348 1015 –
Steel 1.0345 48.4 7627 520 –
HDPE 0.13 654 – –

Fig. 2. DSC cycle test of HDPE INEOS Rigidex HD6070EA.

Fig. 4. In total 170 kg of HDPE pellets were poured into the storage. Immersed
thermocouples were used to measure the PCM temperature during storage
operation.

the storage was discharged again. In all experiments shown here,

Fig. 3. Dimensions of a single aluminum fin showing the staggered arrangement of
the steel tubes. At positions 1–5 thermocouples were immersed within the PCM.
To analyze the energy and power6 characteristics, we tested the
step response of the storage: the storage was heated to a discharge
temperature, T discharged , below the PCM melting range. Then, we
increased the inlet temperature to a set point above the melting
range, T charged , to charge the storage where the polymer was com-
pletely melt and a new thermal equilibrium was reached.7 Finally,
6
The storage power is defined by Q_ ¼ mc_ p ðT out  T in Þ.
7
Actually, it would have taken days to reach thermal equilibrium in the whole
storage because the driving temperature gradients become smaller and smaller
within the outer parts of the storage over time. Thus, in practice, we waited until the
calculated storage charging power was dropping below approximately 300 W.
we used constant mass flow conditions.
Fig. 9 shows an example where the storage was charged from
105 °C to 155 °C and discharged from 155 °C to 105 °C at a constant
mass flow of 0.41 kg/s. One can clearly observe the plateaus of the
PCM temperatures8 and to a weaker extent of the charging and dis-
charging power curves typical for latent heat storages.
It is interesting to compare the melting and crystallization
behavior retrieved from the experimental storage characterization
with the DSC measurements performed at different heating and
cooling rates (Fig. 10). The subcooling in a real-sized storage is
actually much lower than the one observed in the DSC, especially
for the commonly used high heating and cooling rates. This effect
may be explained by a combination of influence factors: lower
heating/cooling rates within the storage (0.1–0.5 K/min), small
sample size in DSC, different geometries (DSC oven vs. fin-tube
8
In the plot we averaged over all sensors per layer.
 C. Zauner et al. / Applied Energy 179 (2016) 237–246 241

Fig. 8. After the measurement campaign, the surface of the PCM was slightly
oxidized. However, it seems that the bulk has been protected quite well.

Fig. 5. View through a bull’s eye at half height of the storage when the polymer is in
its molten state. Air bubbles can be seen that can only escape very slowly due to the
high viscosity of the HDPE. This picture was taken after the first out of two refills
with subsequent melting.

Fig. 9. Temperatures and calculated power profiles for a thermal oil mass flow of
0.41 kg/s.

Fig. 6. View through a bull’s eye at half height of the storage when the polymer is in
its solid state. This picture was taken after the first out of two refills with
subsequent melting and the crystallization thereafter.

Fig. 10. DSC measurements of HDPE for different heating and cooling rates
compared to the melting and crystallization ranges of the prototype storage. The
Fig. 7. Top surface of the full storage before the quantitative characterization was latter ones were estimated from the temperature plateaus of the immersed
started. thermocouples (cf. Fig. 9).
242 C. Zauner et al. / Applied Energy 179 (2016) 237–246

heat exchanger), different surface properties (roughness, contact

angle), and materials (different aluminum alloys, steel). The
enthalpy calculated from various storage measurements (Table 1)
tends to be somewhat higher than the DSC values. Thus, one has
to be careful with the interpretation of DSC results especially if
heating and cooling rates differ much from the ones expected in
the real storage.
Furthermore we studied the influence of different mass flows
for the same inlet temperature conditions as described above (from
105 °C to 155 °C and back to 105 °C). The outlet temperatures and
calculated discharging power curves for heat transfer fluid mass
flows of 0.41 kg/s, 0.58 kg/s, 1.0 kg/s and 1.94 kg/s are shown in
Fig. 11. By increasing the mass flow, one can increase the discharg-
ing power in the beginning, which is associated with a reduction of
the outlet temperatures. Depending on the application one has to
employ an appropriate control strategy for the mass flow and/or Fig. 13. Detail of the simulation grid. The rotational symmetry allows to simulate
the entire fin-tube heat exchanger (more than 300 fins, 2.5 m long) in acceptable
inlet temperature to be able to achieve the required power and time. The fins are only 0.25 mm thick and modeled with one cell across the width.
outlet temperature characteristics.
Not only power and outlet temperature, but also the total
stored energy depends on the initial and final temperatures
imposed on the storage. For a constant mass flow of 1 kg/s, we var-
ied the initial and final temperatures as follows: from 85 °C to
175 °C, from 95 °C to 165 °C and from 105 °C to 155 °C (Fig. 12).
At these conditions one can almost fully charge the storage within
two hours. It has to be mentioned that the electrical heating power
of our thermostat was limited to 33.3 kW,9 which explains the
same slope of all three curves at the beginning. One can calculate
the various characteristic figures for the storage as summarized in
Table 1, where heat losses have been neglected.10

3. Simulation

3.1. Setup of the simulation

Simulations of the discharge process have been carried out with

computational fluid dynamics (CFD) mainly because we were
interested in how far a model based on laboratory measurements
of the material parameters and the design geometry can reproduce
the experimental results. Moreover, we also wanted to gain more
insight into the internal heat flows between the individual compo-
Fig. 11. Storage power profiles and outlet temperatures for different mass flow nents of the storage, which is not possible in the experiment. This
rates.
knowledge should then be used to predict the effect of different
operating conditions, geometries or material parameters in order
to suggest improved storage designs.
The problem is computationally very expensive: the resolution
of the heat exchanger structure (72 parallel tubes with 301 closely
packed fins made of 0.25 mm thin aluminum) requires very small
cells and many timesteps to simulate the entire discharge process
of about two hours. Thus, some simplifications of the geometry are
necessary: since the tubes of the heat exchanger run in parallel it is
possible to simulate only one single tube and add up the energies
of all 72 parallel tubes afterward. Due to the staggered tube
arrangement (see Fig. 3) the partitioned volume is a hexagonal
prism, which we approximated with a cylinder of equal volume
because this allows to exploit the rotational symmetry of the body.
Adiabatic boundary conditions were employed around the PCM.
With this modifications the storage can be simulated in three
dimensions and with full resolution of the fin-tube heat exchanger
in acceptable time (see Fig. 13).

9
Due to losses the actual heating power available at the storage inlet is only
25 kW.
10
As already mentioned above, it would have taken too long to wait for complete
thermal equilibrium. Only then, we could have directly measured the heat losses.
Fig. 12. Stored energy for different operating temperatures and a mass flow of 1 kg/ However, from the data obtained and simple calculations one might estimate them to
s. be less than 0.2 kW h.
 C. Zauner et al. / Applied Energy 179 (2016) 237–246 243

All the simulations have been performed with ANSYS Fluent 15. Because the volume contraction and void contribution is
The flow of the heat transfer fluid was calculated using the SST k-x already accounted for by using a reduced density, the total PCM
turbulence model using the material parameters from thermal oil volume was retained constant throughout the whole simulation.
supplier (see Table 2). The boundary condition at the fluid inlet The temperature dependent thermophysical properties of the tube
was a velocity block profile with mass flow rate and temperature and fin materials were characterized experimentally and were
defined by the experiment. The turbulent intensity was estimated implemented in the simulation, the thermal oil properties were
based on the geometry and dimensions of the inlet manifold. At the taken constant. The material values are given exemplary for
outlet of the tube, we used the outflow boundary condition, which 150 °C in Table 2.
leaves the velocity profile and pressure unrestricted. At the beginning of the simulations, when the flow develops
Due to the high viscosity of the molten PCM and the small fin and a large amount of sensible heat is released, we used very small
spacing any natural convection in the melt can safely be neglected, timesteps of 0.1 s. The time step size was gradually increased over
i.e. the PCM behaves as a solid. Consequently, the heat transfer in time. Most of the simulation was performed with 10 s timesteps.
all the other volumes (tube, fins and PCM) was modeled by solid
state conduction only. 3.2. Comparison with experimental data
The thermodynamics of the phase change is modeled with a
temperature dependent specific heat, cp ðTÞ, using data from the Fig. 14 compares the heat transfer rates determined by the
DSC measurements (see insert of Fig. 14) at a cooling rate of experiment and simulations. The simulated curve matches the
0.5 K/min, In view Fig. 10 and the observed temperature gradients measured data very well. In particular the high heat transfer rates
as e.g. shown in Fig. 9, this is justified. Thermal conductivity and at the beginning of the discharge process agree almost exactly with
density were derived from laser flash measurements and dilatom- the experimental data.
etry for well crystallized bulk material without any voids. How- One important benefit of the numerical simulations is that the
ever, as can be seen from Fig. 7, the situation in a real storage is evolution of the solidification front can be observed during the dis-
somewhat different. Due to the high viscosity of the polymer, some charge process. This allows us to distinguish three different phases
air remained trapped within the storage after melting of the PCM in the solidification process. The PCM close to the inlet solidifies
pellets. In addition, in our storage design there is some free space immediately at the beginning and the solidification front develops
below the inlet and outlet manifolds, where apparently PCM has in radial and axial direction towards the outlet. Sensible and latent
been creeping into over the course of the measurements. There- heat is released and the heat transfer rate decreases strongly from
fore, it is difficult to correctly determine the actual filling factor its high initial value (see Fig. 15, for example). At a certain time
and thus the effective density of the PCM in our storage. It turned solidification occurs in most regions of the storage and thus is
out that a density of 654 kg/m3 and a corresponding reduction of the dominating process. The phase change stops the rapid decrease
the bulk thermal conductivity by roughly 30% to 0.13 W/m K using of the heat transfer rate and the curve becomes flatter until most of
the Maxwell-Eucken Model [34] reproduced the experimental data the PCM has solidified. Later the remaining sensible heat is
best. released and the curve becomes again steeper. The long tail at
the end is a consequence of the small driving temperature differ-
ence between the heat transfer fluid and the PCM. The deviation
40 in this region is partly due to experimental uncertainties in the
Experiment
Specific Heat, cp (kJ / kg K)

35 120 30
Simulation
100
80 Tube to Fluid
30
Heat Transfer Rate, Q (kW)

60 PCM to Fins
25
40 PCM to Tube
.

25
Heat Transfer Rate, Q (kW)

20
HEX sensible
0
80 100 120 140 20
.

20
Temperature, T (°C)
A
15 15
B
10
10

5
0
0 0.5 1 1.5 2
Time, t (h)
0
0 0.5 1 1.5 2
Fig. 14. Comparison between simulation and experiment. The simulation model
reproduces the experimental results very well with the data from the DSC Time, t (h)
measurements (insert). Several phases of the discharge process can be distin-
guished: Immediately at the beginning the PCM close to the inlet solidifies and the Fig. 15. Internal heat transfer. Most of the heat flows from the PCM across the fins
solidification front travels away from this point in radial and axial direction. and only a small amount takes the route across the PCM to the tube. This proofs that
Sensible and latent heat is released until at a certain time (A) the entire PCM is in the heat exchanger is a very effective structure. Also the sensible heat of the heat
the phase change region. The phase change stops the rapid decrease of the heat exchanger can be extracted, but its contribution is small. The small dip in the heat
transfer rate until most of the PCM has solidified (B). After the phase change the flux from PCM to tube at about 0.2 h is due an instability in the inlet temperature
PCM releases sensible heat. The long tail is formed because the driving temperature and shows that the PCM in direct contact with the tube reacts first to changes in the
difference between fluid and PCM goes to zero at the end. fluid temperature.
244 C. Zauner et al. / Applied Energy 179 (2016) 237–246

150 150 the effect of changes to the operating conditions, geometry and
Experiment material parameters in order to suggest changes for improved
140 140 Simulation designs.
One important factor is the laminar flow conditions (Re  760)
130 130 and the associated low heat transfer rates. We run simulations
with a mass flow rate of two and ten times the original rate. The
120 120 results (see Fig. 17) show that the heat transfer rate is considerably
increased. This demonstrates that much higher powers can be
Temperature, T (°C)

110 110 delivered by the storage if the heat transfer from the tube to the
a b fluid would be more effective.
100 100 Another interesting test is to enforce a laminar solution by
0 0.5 1 1.5 2 0 0.5 1 1.5 2
switching off the turbulence model. This leads to a considerable
reduction in the heat transfer coefficient of the inner tube wall
150 150 and to a pronounced plateau during the solidification of the PCM.
The approximately constant curve suggests that the heat transfer
140 140 into the fluid is the main limitation, since the increased distance
of solidification front to the fins influences the overall heat transfer
130 130 only slightly.
Because the heat transfer coefficient at the inner tube wall plays
120 120 such an important role we evaluate this quantity based on the
mean fluid temperature and the mean surface temperature at the
110 110 inside of the tube wall. As expected the value is rather low
c d (h  150 W=m2 K) but significantly higher than one would expect
100 100 for laminar flow (see the insert of Fig. 17). There are two reasons
0 0.5 1 1.5 2 0 0.5 1 1.5 2
for this behavior. First, entry length effects must be considered as
Time, t (h)
the comparison of the laminar simulations to the theoretical values
Fig. 16. Prediction of local PCM temperatures. The temperatures calculated by the show. Second, turbulence is propagated from the inlet down-
simulation agree acceptably well with the experiment. Sources of error are stream, which leads to a further enhancement of the heat transfer.
experimental uncertainties (placement of the sensors, thermal contact to the An indication for weak turbulence mixing is that the extrapolation
PCM) and the simplifying assumptions of the simulations.
of the Dittus-Boelter equation to the low Reynolds numbers of the
flow leads to approximately the right value.
determination of the heat transfer rate when the temperature dif- After analyzing the effect of the mass flow rate, which is the
ference goes to zero and because of differences between the real main control variable, we were interested if changes to the geom-
storage physics and the simplified simulation model. etry or the material parameters could enhance the performance of
Another advantage of the CFD simulations is that the internal
heat transfer between the components is accessible (see Fig. 15).
Such an analysis shows that the heat exchanger is a very effective
structure: most of the heat from the PCM is transferred by the fins
and only a small amount takes the route through the PCM to the
tube. This graph shows also that the high initial heat transfer rate
is not due to thermal mass of the heat exchanger: by far the largest
contribution comes directly from the PCM.
Another check for the simulations is provided by the local tem-
perature sensors placed inside the PCM. The overall agreement
between simulation and experiment is acceptable (Fig. 16),
although some clear deviations exist. An experimental error due
to the difficulties in placing the sensors between the densely
spaced fins at a precise distance from the tube is very likely. Due
to the granularity of the material it is also possible that the thermal
contact between the sensor and the melt was weak. This may have
led to experimental temperatures lagging behind as observed in
three of the four cases, but there is surely also a modeling error
due to the simplifications of the geometry we have made.
All in all the simulation successfully reproduces the experimen-
tal results. In particular the time dependence of the overall heat
transfer rate of the storage, which is the most important property
in an application, can be calculated with good accuracy. It is impor-
tant to note that the model bases entirely on experimental data
and has no free parameters (except the final packing density of
the PCM). Fig. 17. Turbulence and entry length effects. Higher mass flow rates induce more
turbulence and lead to better heat transfer between fluid and tube, while a forced
laminar solution reduces the heat transfer rate considerable. The insert shows that
3.3. Improved heat exchanger designs for a laminar flow solution entry length effects are important. (L and LE are the
theoretical laminar values with and without entry length effects). An extrapolation
of the Dittues-Boelter equation to low Reynolds numbers (DB) is a good approx-
After the successful comparison between simulation and exper- imation. These results indicate that the flow is not purely laminar and that weak
iment we exploited another advantage of simulations and studied turbulent mixing exists.
 C. Zauner et al. / Applied Energy 179 (2016) 237–246
40
Simulation
35 2 ⋅ λfin
2 ⋅ λPCM
30
Heat Transfer Rate, Q (kW)
nfins / 2
nfins / 2, 2 ⋅ λPCM
.
25
20
15
10
5
0 regarding characterization results. The paper was written by C.Z.
0 0.5 1 1.5
Time, t (h)
Fig. 18. Improved geometries and materials. The simulations show that no
performance can be gained by increasing the number of fins or the thermal
conductivity of the PCM, because the heat transfer into the fluid is the main
limitation. The heat exchanger performs already very well. It is possible to build a
cheaper storage which has half the number of fins with only minor loss in
performance.
the storage. We found that increasing the number of fins or the
thermal conductivity of the PCM does not lead to any significant
improvements (Fig. 18). This is in line with our view that the heat
exchanger performs very well and that the heat transfer to the fluid
is the main limitation of the current design. A reduction of the
number of fins by a factor of two slightly decreases the power at
the beginning of the plateau, but increases it in the end leading
to a smoother profile. If one doubles the thermal conductivity of
the PCM at the same time, one arrives back at the original power
profile revealing a design freedom of this storage.
4. Conclusion and outlook
PCM storages can be used in many different applications with
very different requirements in terms of storage capacity, charging
and discharging power profiles, available charging inlet tempera-
tures and demanded discharging outlet temperatures. Polymers
are a widely available, cheap and versatile class of materials that
have been rarely considered as PCM until now. After a thorough
screening we identified PE, POM and various PAs as promising can-
didates and selected HDPE for more detailed investigations. We
showed that it has a high phase change enthalpy and is thermally
stable over more than 1000 cycles. We designed a suitable heat
exchanger, built a lab-scale prototype storage and characterized
its energy capacity and power profiles for different operating con-
ditions. A three dimensional computer model was developed and
showed excellent agreement with the experiments. It allowed us
to investigate the heat transfer within the storage in detail and
understand the storage behavior under different operating condi-
tions. Finally, we used the model to analyze the consequences of
different number of fins and PCM thermal conductivity. We found
that our polymer-PCM storage design can indeed be employed for
different applications either by adapting suitable mass flow control
strategies or by altering some design parameters (e.g. fin spacing,
PCM thermal conductivity). In our ongoing work, we are currently
investigating different applications (aluminum die casting,
245
polymer extrusion, district heating networks) to identify the exact
requirements for a storage. Based on a detailed monitoring we will
adapt and optimize our current PCMs and storage design and plan
to demonstrate how one can improve energy efficiency and reduce
CO2 emission utilizing new polymer-PCM storages.
Author contributions and acknowledgments
The Austrian Research Promotion Agency (FFG) is gratefully
acknowledged for funding this work under Grant No. 838669 (Stor-
eITup!) and under Grant No. 848914 (StoreITup-IF). C.Z. conceived,
submitted and leads the projects, performed the PCM screening,
designed and characterized the storage with the help of M.E and
F.H. GEA Klimatechnik built the storage. D.L. and C.Z. characterized
the PCMs. F.H. performed the CFD simulations. M.E. performed his
master thesis at AIT supervised by C.Z., F.H. and H.W. who is grate-
fully acknowledged for valuable discussions regarding storage
design, simulation and characterization. R.H. is the PhD supervisor
of C.Z. and is gratefully acknowledged for valuable discussions
2
and F.H. and commented by all authors. Katharina Resch from
the University of Leoben is gratefully acknowledged for ideas in
the project development phase and material screening.
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