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Energy Procedia 00 (2016) 000–000

www.elsevier.com/locate/procedia

The 8th International Conference on Applied Energy – ICAE2016

Flow and heat transfer characteristics of micro-encapsulated

phase change material slurry and energy transport evaluation
F. Ma, P. Zhang*, X J Shi
Institute of Refrigeration and Cryogenics, MOE Key Laboratory for Power Machinery and Engineering, Shanghai Jiao Tong
University, Shanghai, 200240, China. zhangp@sjtu.edu.cn

Abstract

Thermal or cold storage is a promising way to alleviate the peak-valley difference of the electricity
load and improve the energy efficiency. The thermal or cold storage by micro-encapsulated phase change
material slurry (MPCS) is one of the effective measures to be implemented in refrigeration and air
conditioning systems due to its large energy storage density and good heat transfer performance. In the
present study, we numerically investigate the flow and heat transfer characteristics of MPCS in a
horizontal pipe under constant heat flux on the wall based on the Eulerian-Eulerian model. It is found that
the numerical results agree well with the experimental results. The temperature of MPCS and liquid
fraction of PCM in MPCM are presented to analyze the influence of particle diameter on heat transfer
between the two phases. Numerical simulations at different inlet velocities are conducted to study the heat
transfer performance of MPCS. Finally, the energy transport characteristics of different heat transfer
fluids are discussed.

© 2016 The Authors. Published by Elsevier Ltd.

Selection and/or peer-review under responsibility of ICAE

Keywords: Micro-encapsulated phase change material slurry; Eulerian-Eulerian model; Heat transfer; Pumping power

1. Introduction

Latent heat thermal energy storage based on phase change material (PCM) has been widely
investigated owing to the advantages such as large heat capacity and nearly isothermal during the phase
change process [1]. However, the characteristics of instability, supercooling and phase separation of the
conventional PCM limit its application. Micro-encapsulated PCM (MPCM) can overcome these defects
through encapsulating the PCM with a layer of thin polymer film which can reduce the exposure of PCM
and increase the stability of PCM. MPCS is obtained by dispersing the MPCM into common carrying
fluid, e.g. water, and it can be used as both the energy storage medium and the heat transfer fluid with
good heat transfer performance. Therefore, MPCS can find a broad application in energy conservation of
refrigerators, heat pump and air-condition, etc [2].
For better utilization of MPCS, many researches have been conducted to investigate the flow and
heat transfer characteristics of MPCS [3-7]. Goel et al. [3] experimentally studied the laminar forced
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convective heat transfer of MPCS in a circular duct with constant heat flux. The influences of volume
fraction of MPCS, Stefan number, etc. on heat transfer performance were analyzed and the results showed
that wall temperature of duct with MPCS was reduced about 50% compared with water. Choi et al. [4]
investigated the flow and heat transfer characteristics of phase change emulsion in turbulent flow, and
they proposed a three-region melting model to estimate the temperature of emulsion along the tube. The
results indicated that the heat transfer coefficient of emulsion increased before the temperature of
emulsion is lower than melting point and decreased rapidly after the temperature of emulsion is higher
than the melting point.
Besides the experimental investigations, many numerical models were developed by the researchers
to study the flow and heat transfer characteristics of MPCS. Zeng et al [8] analyzed the influences of
different parameters on the heat transfer of MPCS based on the single phase model which treats the
MPCS as a homogeneous fluid of which the properties are mixed properties between MPCM and carrying
fluid. The results indicated that the Stefan number and Mr number which represents the dimensionless
phase change temperature range play important roles for the variation of Nusselt number. Sabbah et al. [9]
numerically investigated the MPCS using a 2D axisymmetric model which was also based on the single
phase model. The results revealed that the heat transfer coefficient was strongly dependent on the location
of melting interface.
However, it should be noted that the interphase interaction and heat exchange between the two
phases were not considered based on the single phase model. In order to obtain a comprehensive
understanding of solid-liquid two-phase flow of MPCS, the Eulerian-Eulerian model [10, 11] in which the
interaction between the two phases are taken into account is adopted to investigate the flow and heat
transfer characteristics of MPCS. In the present study, the numerical simulation based on Eulerian-
Eulerian model and kinetic theory of granular flow is validated through comparison with the experimental
results. And then, the flow and heat transfer characteristics of MPCS in a horizontal pipe under constant
heat flux are investigated via this model.

2. Mathematical model

2.1 Governing equations

The Eulerian-Eulerian model assumes the solid phase and liquid phase are interpenetrating continua,
which means the dispersed solid phase can be considered as a pseudo-fluid. The governing equations for
each phase are built and solved separately, but coupled through the interaction between the two phases.
The k- turbulence mode for each phase is adopted to describe the turbulence transfer among the two
phase and two additional transport equations for solid phase are solved. The k and  equations describing
the turbulence model are in standard form which can be referred to [12].
Due to the limited point contact between solid particles and pipe wall, most amount of heat is firstly
absorbed by liquid phase and then transferred from liquid phase to solid phase in the near-wall region. In
addition, the volume fraction of solid phase has great influence on heat conduction of each phase in the
main flow region. Therefore, the effective thermal conductivities of each phase in different regions need
to be modified. The effective thermal conductivities of each phase in the main flow region and near-wall
region can be obtained through reference [13] and [14], respectively.
Based on the kinetic theory of granular flow, the granular temperature of solid phase which
represents the solid fluctuating energy caused by particle-particle collision can be obtained through the
following transport equation [15]:
3
2  t
s s s s s s s 

s s s  s

s 
          v       P    :  v    k      

sl s
(1)

The volume heat transfer coefficient between the two phases is estimated based on the correlation
proposed by Gunn [16]:
 Author name / Energy Procedia 00 (2016) 000–000 3

    
hsl  6 s 7  10 l  5 l2 1  0.7 Res0.2 Pr1 3  1.33  2.4 l  1.2 l2 Re s0.7 Pr1 3  l d s2  (2)
Considering the phase change during the heat transfer process, the latent heat of MPCM is treated as
effective specific heat capacity during the phase change temperature range (Tp,s ~ Tp,l), which should
conform to the relationship as follows:
c p ,p,s  c p ,p,l

T
c dT  H 
p ,l

T p ,s
p , p ,e T  T 
p p,l p,s
(3)
2
The middle triangle model [17] is adopted in the present study to calculate the effective specific heat
capacity of MPCM during the phase change process.
The liquid volume fraction of PCM in the MPCM which is introduced to investigate the phase
change of MPCM could be calculated through the temperature of MPCM as follows:
T
  c dT H  T T T (4)
p

l,pcm p ,p,e p p,s p p,l

Tp,s

when Tp＜Tps or Tp＞Tp,l, αl,pcm=0 or αl,pcm =1.

2.2 Boundary and initial conditions

A pipe with 1.0 m in length and 10.0 mm in diameter is used for analysis in the numerical simulation.
The thermo-physical properties of the MPCM and carrying fluid are listed in Table 1. The phase change
temperature range is set to be 300.1~301.3 K in the present study. Constant velocity and volume fraction
both for the two phases are supplied at the inlet. The outlet is set as pressure outlet condition. The
constant heat flux is applied on the pipe wall. In addition, no-slip condition for liquid phase and Johnson-
Jackson partial-slip condition for solid phase at the pipe wall are employed.

Table 1. Thermo-physical properties of MPCM and carried fluid [5].

 (kg/m3) cp (J/(kg K)) (W/(m K)) H (kJ/kg) (mPa·s)
MPCM (solid) 1000 1754 0.31 167
MPCM (liquid) 936 2014 0.144
water 997 4180 0.61 0.87

2.3 Numerical procedures

The numerical simulation is conducted by commercially available CFD software-Ansys Fluent. The
mesh of computational domain was created using the structured grid with hexahedral cells. It is found that
the total amount of 620000 cells with 620 on the cross section and 1000 in the flow direction was
adequate enough to ensure the accuracy of the numerical results without too long computing time. The
governing equations are discredited by the finite volume method and solved through the phase-coupled
SIMPLE algorithm. The convergence criteria for the residuals of governing equations are 10-4. The
calculation is finished when there is no variation for the outlet temperature of MPCS.

Figure.1 Computational grid of the pipe used in the numerical simulation.

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3. Results and discussion

3.1 Modelling validation

The numerical model is validated through comparing the numerical results with experimental results
reported in the reference [5] from the two aspects of flow and heat transfer, respectively. The MPCS (ds=
6.3 um) flowed in a horizontal pipe with 8.0 m in length of experimental section and 10.1 mm in diameter.
The comparisons between the numerical results and experimental results are shown in Fig. 2. It is clear
that the pressure drop obtained by the numerical simulation agrees well with the experimental result at the
solid volume fraction of 20%, as shown in Fig. 2(a), which means the pressure drop of MPCS could be
accurately predicated by the numerical model. The temperature of MPCS along the pipe is used to
validate the heat transfer of numerical model. The temperature of the numerical result is nearly identical
to the experimental result, as shown in Fig. 2(b). It can be seen that the temperature increases quickly near
the inlet and outlet of the pipe since the energy in these regions is absorbed as the sensible heat of MPCM.
When the temperature of MPCM increases to the phase change temperature, it increases slowly due to the
involvement of latent heat. Apparently there is a flat region of the temperature evolution curve. Although
the ratio of length to diameter of pipe adopted in the discussion below is different from the pipe validated
in this section, the mechanism of flow and heat transfer is similar for the MPCS in different pipes. The
mathematical model described above is available to be used to investigate the flow and heat transfer
characteristics of MPCS because the numerical results agree well with the experimental results.
306
Yamagish et. al [5] (Experiment)
Pressure drop (kPa/m)

Ymagish et. al [5] (Experiment )

10 Present study (Numerical result) Present study (Numerical result)
304
s,in=12.0 vol%.
s,in=20.0 vol% 302 vin= 1.25 m/s
T (K)

Q = 5 kW
300

298

1 296
1 2 3 4 0 200 400 600 800
Flow velocity (m/s) Dimensionless axis distance x/D
(a) (b)
Figure. 2 Comparisons between the numerical results and experimental results [5]. (a) Pressure drop (b)
temperature of MPCS along the pipe.

3.2 Temperature field and liquid volume fraction

Fig. 3(a) shows the temperature field of MPCM along the flow direction under the condition of
in=12.0 vol%, vin=1 m/s, qwall=100 kW/m2 and ds=10 um. The inlet temperature of MPCS is set to be 300
K for all the cases. Since the inlet temperature is close to the lower limit of phase change temperature and
the heat flux on the wall is very high, the temperature of MPCM rises quickly to the phase change
temperature after MPCS flows into the pipe. And then the MPCM temperature maintains in the phase
change temperature range over a long distance due to the energy is absorbed as latent heat in this region.
It is similar to results in [5] that there is a slow variation of temperature. However, it should be noted that
the temperature in the near-wall region has been increased over the upper limit of phase change
temperature, which means the PCM near the wall has been melted completely. It can be seen that the
liquid volume fraction of PCM in MPCM in Fig. 3(b) corresponds to the temperature of MPCM. There is
a long distance in which the liquid fraction of PCM is about 50.0 vol%. The main reason is that large
 Author name / Energy Procedia 00 (2016) 000–000 5

amount of energy is needed for phase change at the temperature of about 300.7 ℃ because the middle
triangle model is used to describe the effective specific heat capacity of MPCM. As derived from middle
triangle model, half of the PCM has been melted when the temperature of MPCM achieved 300.7 ℃.

Figure. 3 Numerical results under the condition of in=12.0 vol%, vin=1 m/s, qwall=100 kW/m2 and ds=10
um. (a) Temperature field of MPCM along the flow direction (b) liquid volume fraction of PCM in
MPCM along the flow direction

3.3 Influence of particle diameter of MPCM

Figure. 4 Numerical results under the condition of in=12.0 vol%, vin=1 m/s, qwall=100 kW/m2 and ds=100
um. (a) Temperature field of MPCM along the flow direction (b) Temperature field of water along the
flow direction
Fig. 4 shows the numerical results under the same condition as in section 3.2, but the diameter of
MPCM particle is increased from 10 um to 100 um in order to investigate the influence of particle
diameter. Comparing Fig. 4(a) with Fig. 3(a), it is clear that the temperature of MPCM with 100 um in
diameter is slightly lower than that with 10 um at the same distance from the inlet along the flow direction,
especially in the main flow region where the MPCM is nearly melted completely. It is indicated that the
temperature of MPCM increases slowly when the particle diameter increases, which means the heat
transfer between the solid and liquid phases is weakened. This is because the volume heat transfer
coefficient between the two phases is related to the particle diameter. As described in Eq. (2), the volume
heat transfer coefficient is reduced 100 times when the particle diameter increases 10 times. As a
consequence, there is a temperature difference between the two phases due to the worse heat transfer.
Such phenomenon caused by the differences of thermo-physical properties of the two phases could not be
obtained by the classical method which considers the two phases as a mixture with the same effective
thermo-physical property. The Eulerian-Eulerian model is more suitable to comprehensively describe the
interaction of the two phases with large difference of thermo-physical properties. It is apparent that the
water temperature is higher than MPCM temperature at the same location, as shown in Fig. 4(a) and 4(b).
It can be seen that the water temperature has been increased above the phase change temperature of
6 Author name / Energy Procedia 00 (2016) 000–000

MPCM whereas the MPCM temperature is still in the phase change temperature range in the near-wall
region.

3.4 Influence of inlet velocity

Numerical simulations at different inlet velocities, i.e., 1 m/s, 1.5 m/s and 2 m/s, are conducted to
investigate the influence of inlet velocity on the heat transfer. The local heat transfer coefficient along the
pipe is calculated through the following equation:
q (8)
h
Twall  TMPCS
Where Twall and TMPCS are the local average temperature of the wall and MPCS along the pipe.
12

10

8
h (kW/(m K))

4
1 m/s
2
1.5 m/s
2 m/s

0
0.0 0.2 0.4 0.6 0.8 1.0
Axis distance (m)
Figure. 5 The local heat transfer coefficients of MPCS at different inlet velocities under the condition of
in=12.0 vol%, qwall=100 kW/m2 and ds=10 um
The local heat transfer coefficients along the pipe at different inlet velocities are shown in Fig. 5. It
can be seen that h decreases gradually in the fully-developed region. The reason is that the amount of
melting MPCM increases along the flow direction, which means more energy is absorbed as sensible heat
with the increase of flow distance. As shown by the variation of h under inlet velocity at 1 m/s, it remains
at constant value when all the MPCM has been melted. Whereas, h still decreases near the outlet of pipe
under inlet velocity of 1.5 m/s and 2 m/s since MPCM is not melted completely due to high velocity, and
h is apparently higher at high velocity comparing with the results at different inlet velocities.

3.5 Energy transport characteristics

25

Water
20
12.0 vol% MPCS
25.0 vol% MPCS
Pumping power (W)

15

10

2 4 6 8 10
Heating load (kW)
Figure. 6 Pumping powers of different heat transfer fluids.
The consumption of pumping power is an important energy transport parameter for the design and
evaluation of a system. In the numerical simulation, MPCS with different volume fraction is compared
with water to investigate the influence of heat transfer fluid on pumping power. The temperature
 Author name / Energy Procedia 00 (2016) 000–000 7

difference between inlet and outlet is assumed to be 5 ℃ and the phase change process is completed from
the inlet to outlet. The pumping powers needed to achieve the same heating load for different heat transfer
fluids are displayed in Fig. 6. Due to the large heat capacity of MPCS, it needs smaller flow rate to
achieve the same transported energy compared with water. Therefore, the pumping power consumption of
MPCS is far less than that of the water. It should be noted that there is slight reduction for pumping
power when the volume fraction increases from 12.0 vol% to 25.0 vol%. The reason is that the viscosity
of the MPCS is not increased linearly with the volume fraction, which results in the pressure drop
increases greatly when the volume fraction increases to 25%. Accordingly, the consumption of pumping
power is slightly decreased with the increase of volume fraction. It is obvious that the pumping power of
water is smaller than MPCS at the same flow rate since the viscosity of MPCS is much higher than pure
water due to the presence of solid MPCM particles. But the most important issue for practical application
is how to transport a certain amount of energy with pumping power as small as possible. Therefore,
MPCS has a considerable advantage over pure water due to larger heat capacity.

4. Conclusions

In the present study, numerical simulations based on the Eulerian-Eulerian model are conducted to
investigate the flow and heat transfer characteristics of MPCS in a horizontal pipe. The numerical model
is validated through comparing with the experimental results in the reference from two aspects of pressure
drop and temperature of MPCS along the pipe. The results showed that the temperature evolution along
the tube corresponds to the liquid fraction of PCM which represents the amount of melted PCM in
MPCM. When the particle diameter of MPCM is enlarged, the temperature of MPCM increased slowly
because the heat transfer between the two phases is weakened. And there is apparent temperature
difference between the two phases compared the temperature fields. The local heat transfer coefficient
decreases along the pipe since the amount of melted MPCM increases along the flow direction. The high
inlet velocity results in high heat transfer coefficient. The pumping power consumption of MPCS is also
investigated through comparing with water and the results showed that it can be greatly reduced when
using MPCS instead of water, which means the energy efficiency could be improved.

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Biography
Dr. Peng Zhang is professor in Shanghai Jiao Tong University. His research is focused on heat transfer and fluid
flow, such as thermal energy storage, flow and heat transfer of phase change material slurry and so on.