Energy Engineering and Management

Energy Engineering and Management

Numerical Study of the Effect of Multiple Phase Change Materials on Improving the Performance of a Thermal Storage System in the Presence of a Middle

Document Type : Original Article

Authors
Aghil Iranmanesh 1
Ali Ghorbani 2
Hadi Farzan 3
1 Department of Mechanical Engineering, University of Jiroft, Jiroft,Kerman, Iran
2 Department of Mechanical Engineering, University of Jiroft, Jiroft, Iran
3 Department of Mechanical Engineering, Vali-e-Asr University of Rafsanjan, Rafsanjan, Iran
10.22052/eem.2026.258903.1180
Abstract
In the present study, the numerical simulation of the melting process of a vertical triple-tube heat exchanger in the presence of multiple phase change materials and a middle plate is studied. The numerical simulation was modeled in ANSYS Fluent software, using the enthalpy-porosity method. The temperature of the hot fluid passing through the heat exchanger was assumed to be 50 °C while the initial temperature of the heat exchanger was set to 15 °C. The hot fluid passing through the heat storage system flew through the inner and outer tubes in a counter-current manner. The flow regime was supposed to be laminar. To assess the effect of multiple phase change materials and the middle plate on improving the thermal efficiency of the energy storage system, the contours of liquid fraction and PCM temperature were compared in different cases. According to the reported numerical results, the simultaneous use of multiple phase change materials (phase change material with lower melting temperature in the inner chamber and phase change materials with higher melting temperature in the outer chamber) as well as the upper, the lower, and the middle plates increased the thermal energy stored in the heat exchanger by 158.41%.
Keywords
convection heat transfer
thermal energy storage
middle plate
multiple phase change material
melting process
Subjects
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Energy Engineering and Management
Volume 15, Issue 4
Autumn 2026
Pages 19-36