IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/eee/energy/v330y2025ics0360544225022443.html

Fabrication and thermal performance of high conductive ceramic PCM capsule for solar thermal energy storage applications

Author

Listed:
  • Bellan, Selvan
  • Kodama, Tatsuya
  • Matsubara, Koji
  • Gokon, Nobuyuki

Abstract

Latent heat storage system consists of salt based PCMs (phase change materials) is one of the promising alternatives to sensible heat storage systems in concentrating solar power (CSP) plants, because of their cost effectiveness and high storage capacity. However, the low heat transfer rate and high corrosivity have limited their applications. In this study, a novel high conductive ceramic capsule has been developed by macro-encapsulation of PCM for packed bed thermal energy storage (TES) systems. Major challenges associated with this system are encapsulation technique to build a stable and long-lasting capsule and the evaluation of heat transfer characteristics during phase change process. To conduct a comprehensive heat transfer analysis, a numerical model has been developed. The phase change characteristics, including melting-front, of the capsule during phase change process have been analyzed experimentally and numerically. The model has been validated by comparing with the experimental data, including visualization. The influences of Reynolds, Stefan and Grashof number on the concurrent conduction and convection, melting dynamics and latent heat storage performance of the capsule have been examined, to obtain how far the thermal performance of the capsule is influenced by operating and geometrical parameters. It has been noticed that increasing the Stefan number (0.089–0.282) enhances the heat transfer, accordingly decreases the full melting time around 64 %. Ultimately, a dimensionless analysis has been conducted and generalized correlations for melt faction and Nusselt number have been derived from the combination of Stefan, Fourier, Reynolds and Grashof numbers.

Suggested Citation

  • Bellan, Selvan & Kodama, Tatsuya & Matsubara, Koji & Gokon, Nobuyuki, 2025. "Fabrication and thermal performance of high conductive ceramic PCM capsule for solar thermal energy storage applications," Energy, Elsevier, vol. 330(C).
    • Handle: RePEc:eee:energy:v:330:y:2025:i:c:s0360544225022443
    DOI: 10.1016/j.energy.2025.136602
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0360544225022443
    Download Restriction: Full text for ScienceDirect subscribers only
    File URL: https://libkey.io/10.1016/j.energy.2025.136602?utm_source=ideas
    LibKey link: if access is restricted and if your library uses this service, LibKey will redirect you to where you can use your library subscription to access this item
    ---><---

    As the access to this document is restricted, you may want to

    for a different version of it.

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Archibold, Antonio Ramos & Gonzalez-Aguilar, José & Rahman, Muhammad M. & Yogi Goswami, D. & Romero, Manuel & Stefanakos, Elias K., 2014. "The melting process of storage materials with relatively high phase change temperatures in partially filled spherical shells," Applied Energy, Elsevier, vol. 116(C), pages 243-252.
    2. Selvan Bellan & Tatsuya Kodama & Nobuyuki Gokon & Koji Matsubara, 2022. "A review on high‐temperature thermochemical heat storage: Particle reactors and materials based on solid–gas reactions," Wiley Interdisciplinary Reviews: Energy and Environment, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 11(5), September.
    3. Ren, Tianze & Yao, Haichen, 2024. "Okra functional biomimetic composite phase change materials integrated with high thermal conductivity, remarkable latent heat, and multicycle stability for high temperature thermal energy storage," Energy, Elsevier, vol. 308(C).
    4. Liu, Ming & Saman, Wasim & Bruno, Frank, 2012. "Review on storage materials and thermal performance enhancement techniques for high temperature phase change thermal storage systems," Renewable and Sustainable Energy Reviews, Elsevier, vol. 16(4), pages 2118-2132.
    5. Laing, Doerte & Bauer, Thomas & Breidenbach, Nils & Hachmann, Bernd & Johnson, Maike, 2013. "Development of high temperature phase-change-material storages," Applied Energy, Elsevier, vol. 109(C), pages 497-504.
    6. Elfeky, Karem Elsayed & Mohammed, Abubakar Gambo & Wang, Qiuwang, 2021. "Cycle cut-off criterion effect on the performance of cascaded, sensible, combined sensible-latent heat storage tank for concentrating solar power plants," Energy, Elsevier, vol. 230(C).
    7. Nithyanandam, K. & Pitchumani, R. & Mathur, A., 2014. "Analysis of a latent thermocline storage system with encapsulated phase change materials for concentrating solar power," Applied Energy, Elsevier, vol. 113(C), pages 1446-1460.
    8. Pirasaci, Tolga & Wickramaratne, Chatura & Moloney, Francesca & Goswami, D. Yogi & Stefanakos, Elias, 2018. "Influence of design on performance of a latent heat storage system at high temperatures," Applied Energy, Elsevier, vol. 224(C), pages 220-229.
    9. Jayathunga, D.S. & Karunathilake, H.P. & Narayana, M. & Witharana, S., 2024. "Phase change material (PCM) candidates for latent heat thermal energy storage (LHTES) in concentrated solar power (CSP) based thermal applications - A review," Renewable and Sustainable Energy Reviews, Elsevier, vol. 189(PB).
    10. Tao, Y.B. & He, Y.L., 2011. "Numerical study on thermal energy storage performance of phase change material under non-steady-state inlet boundary," Applied Energy, Elsevier, vol. 88(11), pages 4172-4179.
    11. ELSihy, ELSaeed Saad & Xu, Chao & Du, Xiaoze, 2022. "Cyclic performance of cascaded latent heat thermocline energy storage systems for high-temperature applications," Energy, Elsevier, vol. 239(PC).
    12. Palacios, A. & Barreneche, C. & Navarro, M.E. & Ding, Y., 2020. "Thermal energy storage technologies for concentrated solar power – A review from a materials perspective," Renewable Energy, Elsevier, vol. 156(C), pages 1244-1265.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Wang, Meijie & Dou, Xianghua & Liu, Weijie & Fu, Kuihua, 2025. "Enhanced thermal performance of a multi-module latent heat storage heat exchanger with mesh-like flow channels," Energy, Elsevier, vol. 334(C).

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. Zhang, Shi-guang & Zhang, Hao & Xi, Xin-ming & Li, Bao-rang, 2025. "A review of design considerations and performance enhancement techniques for thermocline thermal energy storage systems," Renewable and Sustainable Energy Reviews, Elsevier, vol. 212(C).
    2. Archibold, Antonio Ramos & Gonzalez-Aguilar, José & Rahman, Muhammad M. & Yogi Goswami, D. & Romero, Manuel & Stefanakos, Elias K., 2014. "The melting process of storage materials with relatively high phase change temperatures in partially filled spherical shells," Applied Energy, Elsevier, vol. 116(C), pages 243-252.
    3. Zeneli, M. & Malgarinos, I. & Nikolopoulos, A. & Nikolopoulos, N. & Grammelis, P. & Karellas, S. & Kakaras, E., 2019. "Numerical simulation of a silicon-based latent heat thermal energy storage system operating at ultra-high temperatures," Applied Energy, Elsevier, vol. 242(C), pages 837-853.
    4. Lin, Yaxue & Alva, Guruprasad & Fang, Guiyin, 2018. "Review on thermal performances and applications of thermal energy storage systems with inorganic phase change materials," Energy, Elsevier, vol. 165(PA), pages 685-708.
    5. Mao, Qianjun & Zhang, Yufei, 2023. "Effect of unsteady heat source condition on thermal performance for cascaded latent heat storage packed bed," Energy, Elsevier, vol. 284(C).
    6. Elfeky, K.E. & Li, Xinyi & Ahmed, N. & Lu, Lin & Wang, Qiuwang, 2019. "Optimization of thermal performance in thermocline tank thermal energy storage system with the multilayered PCM(s) for CSP tower plants," Applied Energy, Elsevier, vol. 243(C), pages 175-190.
    7. Mostafavi Tehrani, S. Saeed & Shoraka, Yashar & Nithyanandam, Karthik & Taylor, Robert A., 2019. "Shell-and-tube or packed bed thermal energy storage systems integrated with a concentrated solar power: A techno-economic comparison of sensible and latent heat systems," Applied Energy, Elsevier, vol. 238(C), pages 887-910.
    8. Ma, Bingqian & Li, Jianqiang & Xu, Zhe & Peng, Zhijian, 2014. "Fe-shell/Cu-core encapsulated metallic phase change materials prepared by aerodynamic levitation method," Applied Energy, Elsevier, vol. 132(C), pages 568-574.
    9. Tehrani, S. Saeed Mostafavi & Taylor, Robert A. & Saberi, Pouya & Diarce, Gonzalo, 2016. "Design and feasibility of high temperature shell and tube latent heat thermal energy storage system for solar thermal power plants," Renewable Energy, Elsevier, vol. 96(PA), pages 120-136.
    10. Yu, De-Hai & He, Zhi-Zhu, 2019. "Shape-remodeled macrocapsule of phase change materials for thermal energy storage and thermal management," Applied Energy, Elsevier, vol. 247(C), pages 503-516.
    11. Khalil Anwar, M. & Yilbas, B.S. & Shuja, S.Z., 2016. "A thermal battery mimicking a concentrated volumetric solar receiver," Applied Energy, Elsevier, vol. 175(C), pages 16-30.
    12. Sanmartí, Oriol & Vera, Jordi & Torras, Santiago & Pérez-Segarra, Carlos D., 2024. "Parametric study for a structured thermal energy storage system for concentrated solar power plants," Energy, Elsevier, vol. 305(C).
    13. Tay, N.H.S. & Liu, M. & Belusko, M. & Bruno, F., 2017. "Review on transportable phase change material in thermal energy storage systems," Renewable and Sustainable Energy Reviews, Elsevier, vol. 75(C), pages 264-277.
    14. ELSihy, ELSaeed Saad & Mokhtar, Omar & Xu, Chao & Du, Xiaoze & Adel, Mohamed, 2023. "Cyclic performance characterization of a high-temperature thermal energy storage system packed with rock/slag pebbles granules combined with encapsulated phase change materials," Applied Energy, Elsevier, vol. 331(C).
    15. Opolot, Michael & Zhao, Chunrong & Liu, Ming & Mancin, Simone & Bruno, Frank & Hooman, Kamel, 2022. "A review of high temperature (≥ 500 °C) latent heat thermal energy storage," Renewable and Sustainable Energy Reviews, Elsevier, vol. 160(C).
    16. Xiao, Tong & Xu, Jinliang & Xie, Jian & Dong, Xinyu & Liu, Chao & Wang, Yan & Yu, Xiongjiang & Zhang, Liang, 2025. "Advanced encapsulation strategies for high-temperature molten salt: Synthesis methods and performance enhancement," Renewable and Sustainable Energy Reviews, Elsevier, vol. 218(C).
    17. Rea, Jonathan E. & Oshman, Christopher J. & Singh, Abhishek & Alleman, Jeff & Parilla, Philip A. & Hardin, Corey L. & Olsen, Michele L. & Siegel, Nathan P. & Ginley, David S. & Toberer, Eric S., 2018. "Experimental demonstration of a dispatchable latent heat storage system with aluminum-silicon as a phase change material," Applied Energy, Elsevier, vol. 230(C), pages 1218-1229.
    18. Mostafavi Tehrani, S. Saeed & Shoraka, Yashar & Diarce, Gonzalo & Taylor, Robert A., 2019. "An improved, generalized effective thermal conductivity method for rapid design of high temperature shell-and-tube latent heat thermal energy storage systems," Renewable Energy, Elsevier, vol. 132(C), pages 694-708.
    19. Wang, Wei & He, Xibo & Hou, Yicheng & Qiu, Jun & Han, Dongmei & Shuai, Yong, 2021. "Thermal performance analysis of packed-bed thermal energy storage with radial gradient arrangement for phase change materials," Renewable Energy, Elsevier, vol. 173(C), pages 768-780.
    20. Safari, Vahid & Abolghasemi, Hossein & Kamkari, Babak, 2021. "Experimental and numerical investigations of thermal performance enhancement in a latent heat storage heat exchanger using bifurcated and straight fins," Renewable Energy, Elsevier, vol. 174(C), pages 102-121.

    More about this item

    Keywords

    ;
    ;
    ;
    ;
    ;

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:eee:energy:v:330:y:2025:i:c:s0360544225022443. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Catherine Liu (email available below). General contact details of provider: http://www.journals.elsevier.com/energy .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.