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Energies
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Phase Change Materials (PCMs) for Heat Storage in Building Applications
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Phase Change Materials (PCMs) for Heat Storage in Building Applications

A special issue of Energies (ISSN 1996-1073). This special issue belongs to the section "D1: Advanced Energy Materials".

Deadline for manuscript submissions: closed (13 January 2022) | Viewed by 7478

Special Issue Editors

Dr. Laura Fedele

E-Mail Website
Guest Editor
Istituto per le Tecnologie della Costruzione, Consiglio Nazionale delle Ricerche, 35127 Padova, Italy
Interests: HVAC&R; alternative refrigerants; low GWP; energy efficiency; thermal energy storage
Special Issues, Collections and Topics in MDPI journals
Dr. Sergio Bobbo

E-Mail Website
Guest Editor
Institute of Construction Technologies, National Research Council, I–35127 Padova, Italy
Interests: low GWP refrigerants; PCMs; nanofluids; thermophysical properties; HVACR applications

Special Issue Information

Dear Colleagues,

We are inviting submissions to a Special Issue of Energies on the subject area of “Phase Change Materials (PCMs) for Heat Storage in Building Applications”. PCMs offer important opportunities to increase the thermal efficiency of buildings by reducing the peak power for heating and cooling, allowing better management of shift peak in heating and cooling or optimizing the coupling with renewable energies.

This Special Issue will deal with formulations of PCMs, their properties and their applications in both heating and cooling plants and building construction materials. Topics of interest for publication include, but are not limited to the following:

  • PCMs materials, also with nanostructures (NEPCMs)
  • Thermal and physical properties of PCMs and NEPCMs
  • Heat transfer
  • Technologies to apply PCMs (e.g., microencapsulation, embedding in construction materials, etc.)
  • Applications of PCMs in buildings (construction materials (passive), thermally activated constructions, glazing and shading devices, combined with ventilation and air-conditioning)
  • Heat storage and renewable energy systems
  • Energy analysis
Dr. Laura Fedele
Dr. Sergio Bobbo
Guest Editors

Manuscript Submission Information

Manuscripts should be submitted online at www.mdpi.com by registering and logging in to this website. Once you are registered, click here to go to the submission form. Manuscripts can be submitted until the deadline. All submissions that pass pre-check are peer-reviewed. Accepted papers will be published continuously in the journal (as soon as accepted) and will be listed together on the special issue website. Research articles, review articles as well as short communications are invited. For planned papers, a title and short abstract (about 100 words) can be sent to the Editorial Office for announcement on this website.

Submitted manuscripts should not have been published previously, nor be under consideration for publication elsewhere (except conference proceedings papers). All manuscripts are thoroughly refereed through a single-blind peer-review process. A guide for authors and other relevant information for submission of manuscripts is available on the Instructions for Authors page. Energies is an international peer-reviewed open access semimonthly journal published by MDPI.

Please visit the Instructions for Authors page before submitting a manuscript. The Article Processing Charge (APC) for publication in this open access journal is 2600 CHF (Swiss Francs). Submitted papers should be well formatted and use good English. Authors may use MDPI's English editing service prior to publication or during author revisions.

Keywords

  • Phase change materials (PCMs)
  • Nanostructure-enhanced PCMs (NEPCMs)
  • Thermophysical properties
  • Heat storage
  • Buildings
  • Energy efficiency

Published Papers (3 papers)

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Research

15 pages, 2641 KiB  
Article
Optimization of Design Variables of a Phase Change Material Storage Tank and Comparison of a 2D Implicit vs. 2D Explicit Model
by Alicia Crespo, Gabriel Zsembinszki, David Vérez, Emiliano Borri, Cèsar Fernández, Luisa F. Cabeza and Alvaro de Gracia
Energies 2021, 14(9), 2605; https://doi.org/10.3390/en14092605 - 02 May 2021
Cited by 7 | Viewed by 1893
Abstract
In this study, a thermal energy storage tank filled with commercial phase change material flat slabs is investigated. The tank provides heat at around 15 °C to the evaporator of a seasonal thermal energy storage system developed under the EU-funded project SWS-Heating. A [...] Read more.
In this study, a thermal energy storage tank filled with commercial phase change material flat slabs is investigated. The tank provides heat at around 15 °C to the evaporator of a seasonal thermal energy storage system developed under the EU-funded project SWS-Heating. A 2D numerical model of the phase changed material storage tank based on the finite control volume approach was developed and validated with experimental data. Based on the validated model, an optimization was performed to identify the number, type and configuration of slabs. The final goal of the phase change material tank model is to be implemented into the whole generic heating system model. A trade-off between results’ accuracy and computational time of the phase change material model is needed. Therefore, a comparison between a 2D implicit and 2D explicit scheme of the model was performed. The results showed that using an explicit scheme instead of an implicit scheme with a reasonable number of nodes (15 to 25) in the heat transfer fluid direction allowed a considerable decrease in the computational time (7 times for the best case) with only a slight reduction in the accuracy in terms on mean average percentage error (0.44%). Full article
(This article belongs to the Special Issue Phase Change Materials (PCMs) for Heat Storage in Building Applications)
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21 pages, 5922 KiB  
Article
Experimental and Numerical Study on Energy Piles with Phase Change Materials
by M. M. Mousa, A. M. Bayomy and M. Z. Saghir
Energies 2020, 13(18), 4699; https://doi.org/10.3390/en13184699 - 09 Sep 2020
Cited by 20 | Viewed by 2377
Abstract
Phase change materials (PCM) utilization in energy storage systems represents a point of interest and attraction for the researchers to reduce greenhouse gas emissions. PCM have been used widely on the interior or exterior walls of the building application to optimize the energy [...] Read more.
Phase change materials (PCM) utilization in energy storage systems represents a point of interest and attraction for the researchers to reduce greenhouse gas emissions. PCM have been used widely on the interior or exterior walls of the building application to optimize the energy consumption during heating and cooling periods. Meanwhile, ground source heat pump (GSHP) gained its popularity because of the high coefficient of performance (COP) and low running cost of the system. However, GSHP system requires a stand-by heat pump during peak loads. This study will present a new concept of energy piles that used PCM in the form of enclosed tube containers. A lab-scaled foundation pile was developed to examine the performance of the present energy pile, where three layers of insulation replaced the underground soil to focus on the effect of PCM. The investigation was conducted experimentally and numerically on two identical piles with and without PCM. Moreover, a flow rate parametric study was conducted to study the effect of the working fluid flow rate on the amount of energy stored and released at each model. Finally, a comprehensive Computational fluid dynamic (CFD) model was developed and compared with the experimental results. There was a good agreement between the experimental measurements and the numerical predictions. The results revealed that the presence of PCM inside the piles increased not only the charging and discharging capacity but also the storage efficiency of the piles. It was found that PCM enhances the thermal response of the concrete during cooling and heating processes. Although increasing the flow rate increased charging and discharging capacity, the percentage of energy stored/released was insignificant compared to the flow rate increasing percentage. Full article
(This article belongs to the Special Issue Phase Change Materials (PCMs) for Heat Storage in Building Applications)
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29 pages, 4613 KiB  
Article
Insight into Foam Pore Effect on Phase Change Process in a Plane Channel under Forced Convection Using the Thermal Lattice Boltzmann Method
by Riheb Mabrouk, Hassane Naji, Hacen Dhahri and Zohir Younsi
Energies 2020, 13(15), 3979; https://doi.org/10.3390/en13153979 - 02 Aug 2020
Cited by 4 | Viewed by 2152
Abstract
In this work, the two-dimensional laminar flow and the heat transfer in an open-ended rectangular porous channel (metal foam) including a phase change material (PCM; paraffin) under forced convection were numerically investigated. To gain further insight into the foam pore effect on charging/discharging [...] Read more.
In this work, the two-dimensional laminar flow and the heat transfer in an open-ended rectangular porous channel (metal foam) including a phase change material (PCM; paraffin) under forced convection were numerically investigated. To gain further insight into the foam pore effect on charging/discharging processes, the Darcy–Brinkmann–Forchheimer (DBF) unsteady flow model and that with two temperature equations based on the local thermal non-equilibrium (LTNE) were solved at the representative elementary volume (REV) scale. The enthalpy-based thermal lattice Boltzmann method (TLBM) with triple distribution function (TDF) was employed at the REV scale to perform simulations for different porosities (0.7≤ε≤0.9) and pore per inch (PPI) density (10≤PPI≤60) at Reynolds numbers (Re) of 200 and 400. It turned out that increasing Re with high porosity and PPI (0.9 and 60) speeds up the melting process, while, at low PPI and porosity (10 and 0.7), the complete melting time increases. In addition, during the charging process, increasing the PPI with a small porosity (0.7) weakens the forced convection in the first two-thirds of the channel. However, the increase in PPI with large porosity and high Re number limits the forced convection while improving the heat transfer. To sum up, the study findings clearly evidence the foam pore effect on the phase change process under unsteady forced convection in a PCM-saturated porous channel under local thermal non-equilibrium (LTNE). Full article
(This article belongs to the Special Issue Phase Change Materials (PCMs) for Heat Storage in Building Applications)
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