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Thermal Energy Storage and Thermal Management (TESM2017)

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A special issue of Energies (ISSN 1996-1073).

Deadline for manuscript submissions: closed (15 March 2018) | Viewed by 51334

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Special Issue Editors

Prof. Dr. Rui Xiong

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Guest Editor

Department of Vehicle Engineering, Beijing Institute of Technology, Beijing 100081, China
Interests: intelligent electrified vehicle; batteries; energy storage; machine learning; AI; big-data; control; optimization and management.
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Dr. Takahiro Nomura

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Guest Editor

Center for Advanced Research of Energy and Materials, Faculty of Engineering, Hokkaido University, Kita 13 Nishi 8, Kita-ku, Sapporo 060-8628, Japan
Interests: thermal energy storage; phase change material; exergy
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Prof. Dr. Zhonghao Rao

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Guest Editor

School of Energy and Environmental Engineering, Hebei University of Technology, Tianjin 300401, China
Interests: battery thermal management; thermal energy storage; phase change heat transfer; micro/nano heat transfer; novel heat pipe
Special Issues, Collections and Topics in MDPI journals

Special Issue Information

Dear Colleagues,

We cordially invite you to contribute to our Special Issue of Energies on the theme of Thermal Energy Storage and Thermal Management.

With the worsening energy shortage and environmental pollution, thermal energy storage and thermal management have received much attention in solar thermal utilization, building energy-saving, cooling electronic devices, the battery thermal management of electrical vehicles, and so on. To enhance the efficiency of thermal energy storage and thermal management systems, the thermal properties of materials and the heat and mass transfer mechanisms of systems are key factors.

This Special Issue will cover recent research and trends in thermal energy storage and thermal management, including materials, devices and systems. In particular, this Special Issue will cover the heat transfer and multiphase flow in different devices and systems. The preparation, characterization and thermal properties of different materials are of interest. We welcome both experimental and computational studies, such as molecular dynamics, dissipative particle dynamics, the lattice Boltzmann method, and so on.

Topics of interest for this Special Issue include, but are not limited to:

&diams; Thermal energy storage techniques, including sensible heat, latent heat and thermochemical heat or a combination of these

&diams; Novel phase-change materials for thermal storage and management, including organic, inorganic and eutectic or micro/nanoencapsulated phase-change materials

&diams; Cooling electronic devices and battery thermal management systems of electrical vehicles, including air cooling, liquid cooling and phase-change material cooling or heating

&diams; Latent heat function of nanofluids and nanocapsules

&diams; Microchannel, loop heat pipe and vapor chamber or flat heat pipe

&diams; Micro/nano heat transfer and multiphase flow of thermal energy storage and thermal management systems, including both experimental and computational studies

&diams; Advanced energy storage management systems

For inquiries regarding this Special Issue, please contact: Dr. Rui Xiong, Editorial Board, Energies (rxiong@bit.edu.cn)

Assoc. Prof. Dr. Rui Xiong
Prof. Dr. Zhonghao Rao
Assoc. Prof. Dr. Takahiro Nomura
Guest Editor

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

Thermal energy storage
Battery thermal management
Cooling electronic devices
Phase-change material
Heat pipe
Nanofluid and nanocapsule
Micro/nano heat transfer
Multiphase flow
Electric vehicles

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Published Papers (8 papers)

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Research

17 pages, 4188 KiB

Open AccessArticle

Methodology and a Continuous Time Mathematical Model for Selecting the Optimum Capacity of a Heat Accumulator Integrated with a CHP Plant

by Ryszard Bartnik, Zbigniew Buryn, Anna Hnydiuk-Stefan and Adam Juszczak

Energies 2018, 11(5), 1240; https://doi.org/10.3390/en11051240 - 13 May 2018

Cited by 6 | Viewed by 3252

Abstract

This paper contains the results of a study in which a novel approach using continuous time notation was applied in the search for the optimum capacity of a heat accumulation tank to be combined with an existing CHP (combined heat and power) plant. The necessary condition associated with the economic profitability of the application of heat accumulation tanks in CHP plants is based on the condition that the profit from the exploitation of the modernized CHP plant does not decrease in relation to this profit before the process was initiated. Hence, the applied methodology provides a dependence that has universal application as it can be used to establish the optimal capacity of a heat accumulation tank suitable for any CHP plant design, i.e., for any thermal capacity of such a plant. The results also demonstrated that the specific enthalpies of the extracted steam before the base load heater and the maximum increase of the flow rate of the extracted steam feeding the base load heater in winter form the only necessary inputs for such calculations. The construction of the heat accumulation tank is only profitable for the case when the difference in the purchase prices at the times corresponding to peak load and base load electricity demand is sufficiently high. Full article

(This article belongs to the Special Issue Thermal Energy Storage and Thermal Management (TESM2017))

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21 pages, 11007 KiB

Open AccessArticle

Multi-Objective Optimal Design of Electro-Hydrostatic Actuator Driving Motors for Low Temperature Rise and High Power Weight Ratio

by Guo Hong, Tian Wei, Xiaofeng Ding and Chongwei Duan

Energies 2018, 11(5), 1173; https://doi.org/10.3390/en11051173 - 7 May 2018

Cited by 16 | Viewed by 4546

Abstract

With the rapid development of technology, motors have drawn increasing attention in aviation applications, especially in the more electrical aircraft and all electrical aircraft concepts. Power weight ratio and reliability are key parameters for evaluating the performance of equipment applied in aircraft. The temperature rise of the motor is closely related to the reliability of the motor. Therefore, based on Taguchi, a novel multi-objective optimization method for the heat dissipation structural design of an electro-hydrostatic actuator (EHA) drive motor was proposed in this paper. First, the thermal network model of the EHA drive motor was established. Second, a sensitivity analysis of the key parameters affecting the cooling performance of the motor was conducted, such as the thickness of fins, the height of fins, the space of fins, the potting materials and the slot fill factor. Third, taking the average temperature of the windings and the power weight ratio as the optimization goal, the multi-objective optimal design of the heat dissipation structure of the motor was carried out by applying Taguchi. Then, a 3-D finite element model of the motor was established and the steady state thermal analysis was carried out. Furthermore, a prototype of the optimal motor was manufactured, and the temperature rise under full load condition tested. The result indicated that the motor with the optimized heat dissipating structure presented a low temperature rise and high power weight ratio, therefore validating the proposed optimization method. Full article

(This article belongs to the Special Issue Thermal Energy Storage and Thermal Management (TESM2017))

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28 pages, 4533 KiB

Open AccessArticle

Improving the Performance Attributes of Plug-in Hybrid Electric Vehicles in Hot Climates through Key-Off Battery Cooling

by Sina Shojaei, Andrew McGordon, Simon Robinson and James Marco

Energies 2017, 10(12), 2058; https://doi.org/10.3390/en10122058 - 5 Dec 2017

Cited by 10 | Viewed by 5894

Abstract

Ambient conditions can have a significant impact on the average and maximum temperature of the battery of electric and plug-in hybrid electric vehicles. Given the sensitivity of the ageing mechanisms of typical battery cells to temperature, a significant variability in battery lifetime has been reported with geographical location. In addition, high battery temperature and the associated cooling requirements can cause poor passenger thermal comfort, while extreme battery temperatures can negatively impact the power output of the battery, limiting the available electric traction torque. Avoiding such issues requires enabling battery cooling even when the vehicle is parked and not plugged in (key-off), but the associated extra energy requirements make applying key-off cooling a non-trivial decision. In this paper, a representative plug-in parallel hybrid electric vehicle model is used to simulate a typical 24-h duty cycle to quantify the impact of hot ambient conditions on three performance attributes of the vehicle: the battery lifetime, passenger thermal comfort and fuel economy. Key-off cooling is defined as an optimal control problem in view of the duty cycle of the vehicle. The problem is then solved using the dynamic programming method. Controlling key-off cooling through this method leads to significant improvements in the battery lifetime, while benefiting the fuel economy and thermal comfort attributes. To further improve the battery lifetime, partial charging of the battery is considered. An algorithm is developed that determines the optimum combination of key-off cooling and the level of battery charge. Simulation results confirm the benefits of the proposed method. Full article

(This article belongs to the Special Issue Thermal Energy Storage and Thermal Management (TESM2017))

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22 pages, 819 KiB

Open AccessArticle

Design of Parallel Air-Cooled Battery Thermal Management System through Numerical Study

by Kai Chen, Zeyu Li, Yiming Chen, Shuming Long, Junsheng Hou, Mengxuan Song and Shuangfeng Wang

Energies 2017, 10(10), 1677; https://doi.org/10.3390/en10101677 - 23 Oct 2017

Cited by 79 | Viewed by 9284

Abstract

In electric vehicles, the battery pack is one of the most important components that strongly influence the system performance. The battery thermal management system (BTMS) is critical to remove the heat generated by the battery pack, which guarantees the appropriate working temperature for the battery pack. Air cooling is one of the most commonly-used solutions among various battery thermal management technologies. In this paper, the cooling performance of the parallel air-cooled BTMS is improved through choosing appropriate system parameters. The flow field and the temperature field of the system are calculated using the computational fluid dynamics method. Typical numerical cases are introduced to study the influences of the operation parameters and the structure parameters on the performance of the BTMS. The operation parameters include the discharge rate of the battery pack, the inlet air temperature and the inlet airflow rate. The structure parameters include the cell spacing and the angles of the divergence plenum and the convergence plenum. The results show that the temperature rise and the temperature difference of the batter pack are not affected by the inlet air flow temperature and are increased as the discharge rate increases. Increasing the inlet airflow rate can reduce the maximum temperature, but meanwhile significantly increase the power consumption for driving the airflow. Adopting smaller cell spacing can reduce the temperature and the temperature difference of the battery pack, but it consumes much more power. Designing the angles of the divergence plenum and the convergence plenum is an effective way to improve the performance of the BTMS without occupying more system volume. An optimization strategy is used to obtain the optimal values of the plenum angles. For the numerical cases with fixed power consumption, the maximum temperature and the maximum temperature difference at the end of the five-current discharge process for the optimized BTMS are respectively reduced by 2.1 K and 4.3 K, compared to the original system. Full article

(This article belongs to the Special Issue Thermal Energy Storage and Thermal Management (TESM2017))

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14 pages, 4133 KiB

Open AccessArticle

Heating Performance Characteristics of High-Voltage PTC Heater for an Electric Vehicle

by Myeong Hyeon Park and Sung Chul Kim

Energies 2017, 10(10), 1494; https://doi.org/10.3390/en10101494 - 26 Sep 2017

Cited by 28 | Viewed by 8852

Abstract

High-voltage positive temperature coefficient (PTC) heaters have a high heating capacity and are fast acting; thus, they function as the actual main heating equipment in electric cars, and considerable research is devoted to improving their heating performance and efficiency. We evaluated the heating performance of a high-voltage PTC heater for an electric car by building a closed-loop-type test system including an air channel, environment chamber, DC power supply, and data acquisition system, and designed an initial prototype with general characteristics. Using this test system, we analyzed the heating performance characteristics of the heater as a function of changes in the blower airflow, ambient temperature, and battery voltage. We changed the geometrical variables of the heater and conducted an analysis to improve the heating performance and output density of the initial prototype. Based on the heating performance of the initial prototype and its geometrical variables, we designed an improved prototype and compared its heating performance and output density with that of the initial prototype. As a result, we achieved a heating capacity of 5.52 kW, a pressure drop of 48.2 Pa, and an efficiency of 98%, whereas the output density was 3.45 kW/kg, which is a 24% improvement over the initial prototype. Full article

(This article belongs to the Special Issue Thermal Energy Storage and Thermal Management (TESM2017))

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16 pages, 1363 KiB

Open AccessArticle

Study on Nested-Structured Load Shedding Method of Thermal Power Stations Based on Output Fluctuations

by Liping Wang, Minghao Liu, Boquan Wang, Jiajie Wu and Chuangang Li

Energies 2017, 10(10), 1472; https://doi.org/10.3390/en10101472 - 23 Sep 2017

Cited by 2 | Viewed by 3963

Abstract

The balance of electric power and energy is important for designing power stations’ load distribution, capacity allocation, and future operation plans, and is thus of vital significance for power design and planning departments. In this paper, we analyzed the correlation between the output fluctuations of power stations and the load fluctuations of the power system in order to study the load change of the power system within a year/month/day, and the output variation amongst the power stations in operation. Reducing the output of hydropower stations or increasing the output of thermal power stations (TPS) could keep the monthly adjustment coefficient of the power system within a certain range, and thus balance the power system’s electric power and energy. The method for calculating the balance of electric power and energy of TPS is also improved. The nested-structured load shedding method (NSLSM), which is based on the calculation principle of the load shedding method, is put forward to iteratively calculate the peak shaving capacity and non-peak shaving capacity of every single thermal power station. In this way, the output process of each thermal power station can be obtained. According to the results and analysis of an example, the proposed methods of calculating monthly adjustment coefficients and the balance of electric power and energy of a thermal power station are validated in terms of correctness, feasibility, and effectiveness. Full article

(This article belongs to the Special Issue Thermal Energy Storage and Thermal Management (TESM2017))

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13 pages, 5252 KiB

Open AccessEditor’s ChoiceArticle

Nusselt Number Correlation for Vertical Tubes with Inverted Triangular Fins under Natural Convection

by Byeong Dong Kang, Hyun Jung Kim and Dong-Kwon Kim

Energies 2017, 10(8), 1183; https://doi.org/10.3390/en10081183 - 10 Aug 2017

Cited by 3 | Viewed by 6317

Abstract

Vertical tubes with inverted triangular fins under natural convection are investigated experimentally. The thermal resistances of tubes with inverted triangular fins are measured for various fin numbers, fin heights, and heat inputs. A Nusselt number correlation that best predicts the measured thermal resistances is proposed. The proposed correlation is applicable to the following conditions: Rayleigh numbers of 1000–125,000, fin height to fin length ratios of 0.2–0.6, and fin numbers of 9–72. Finally, a contour map of the thermal resistances calculated from the proposed correlation for various fin thicknesses and fin numbers is presented. The contour map shows that there exist optimal values of the fin thickness and fin number at which the thermal resistance of the inverted-triangular-finned tube is minimized. Therefore, the proposed correlation enables a search for the optimal dimensions and has potential to be used in the designing of inverted-triangular-finned tubes of various cooling devices. Full article

(This article belongs to the Special Issue Thermal Energy Storage and Thermal Management (TESM2017))

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9 pages, 2824 KiB

Open AccessArticle

Effect of Carbon Nanoadditives on Lithium Hydroxide Monohydrate-Based Composite Materials for Low Temperature Chemical Heat Storage

by Xixian Yang, Shijie Li, Hongyu Huang, Jun Li, Noriyuki Kobayashi and Mitsuhiro Kubota

Energies 2017, 10(5), 644; https://doi.org/10.3390/en10050644 - 6 May 2017

Cited by 18 | Viewed by 7072

Abstract

Carbon nanospheres (CNSs) and multi-walled carbon nanotubes (MWCNTs) as nanoadditives were used to modify lithium hydroxide monohydrate for low temperature chemical heat storage application. The lithium hydroxide monohydrate particles were well dispersed on the nanoscale level, and the diameter of nanoparticles was about 20–30 nm in the case of the carbon nanospheres and 50–100 nm the case of the MWCNTs, as shown by transmission electron microscopy characterization results. X-ray diffraction results indicated that the LiOH·H₂O-carbon nano thermochemical composite materials were successfully synthesized. The thermochemical composite materials LiOH·H₂O/CNSs (2020 kJ/kg), LiOH·H₂O/MWCNTs (1804 kJ/kg), and LiOH·H₂O/AC (1236 kJ/kg) exhibited obviously improved heat storage density and higher hydration rate than pure LiOH·H₂O (661 kJ/kg), which was shown by thermogravimetric and differential scanning calorimetric (TG-DSC) analysis. It appears that nanocarbon-modified lithium hydroxide monohydrate thermochemical composite materials have a huge potential for the application of low temperature chemical heat storage. Full article

(This article belongs to the Special Issue Thermal Energy Storage and Thermal Management (TESM2017))

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