Applied Thermal Engineering 129 (2018) 269–279

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Applied Thermal Engineering

journal homepage: www.elsevier.com/locate/apthermeng

Research Paper

Non-uniform heat transfer suppression to enhance PCM melting

by angled fins
Chenzhen Ji a,b, Zhen Qin a,b, Zhenghua Low b, Swapnil Dubey a, Fook Hoong Choo a, Fei Duan b,⇑
a
Energy Research Institute @ NTU, Nanyang Technological University, 1 Cleantech Loop, 06-04 Cleantech One, Singapore 637141, Singapore
b
School of Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering, Nanyang Technological University, 50 Nanyang Avenue, Singapore 639798, Singapore

h i g h l i g h t s

Fins with inclined angles are proposed to enhance the PCM melting.

Fins with 15° accelerate the PCM melting more than other angles.

Non-uniform melting in the enclosure is suppressed by the 15° fins.

Fin length with titling angles shows significant effect on improving melting rate.

a r t i c l e i n f o a b s t r a c t

Article history: We present numerical investigations on a thermal energy storage system with phase change materials
Received 1 September 2017 (PCMs) vertically heated from one side of a rectangular enclosure. A transient numerical model is
Revised 4 October 2017 developed to study the heat transfer and melting behaviors, and the natural convection is accounted.
Accepted 6 October 2017
To suppress the non-uniform heat transfer for the PCM melting enhancement, fins with the inclined angle
Available online 7 October 2017
of 0 ; þ15 ; þ30 ; 15 and 30 are proposed. The melt fraction contours with the natural convection
driven flow are performed and compared, as well as the temperature distributions. Results show that
Keywords:
the fins in a downward angle of 15 accelerate the PCM melting faster than the others, as the part of
Thermal energy storage
Phase change materials
heat is well transferred to the bottom of container along the fins and the original non-uniform melting
Heat transfer enhancement caused by natural convection is reduced. Contrarily, the upward fins in þ15 and þ30 deepen the
Angled fins non-uniform heat distribution and slow down the melting. The saved PCM melting time is defined on
Natural convection the basis of the No Fin PCM case. It is found that saved melting time of PCMs with 15 fins increases
23.8% on the case of the 0 fins, while decreases 45.2% and 71.4% with the þ15 and þ30 fins. The fin
length and heat flux input are also examined for the PCM melting. The fin length shows the significant
influence on the PCM melting with the tilted fins. As the length ratio of fin to container increases to
0.75, the non-uniform melting is obviously suppressed due to the addition of the 15 fins, and temper-
ature contours inside the PCM domain show much more uniform, by comparing with 0 fins. The PCM
melting rate with 15 fins also increases greatly and the saved melting time rises about 62.7%.
Besides, the enhancement ratio reveals that the melting enhancement by the fins mainly appears at
the second half of the entire process, based on the PCM solid-liquid interface formed at the first half.
Ó 2017 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

1. Introduction and relatively constant temperature during charging and discharg-

Over the last decade, the latent heat thermal energy storage
(LHTES) systems with phase change materials (PCMs) have been
extensively developed in various engineering fields [1–4] for the
energy efficiency improvement [5]. PCMs working as thermal
storage mediums have obvious advantages: high storage capacity
⇑ Corresponding author.
E-mail address: feiduan@ntu.edu.sg (F. Duan).
ing. However, PCMs have a remarkable drawback: low thermal
conductivity for the heat transfer, which lengthens the melting
or solidification time, and seriously depresses their practical appli-
cations. Therefore, heat transfer enhancement techniques [6–8] are
developed for the effective phase change thermal storage system
designs, for example, the utilization of fins [9–11] and foams
[12,13], insertion of metal matrix in the PCMs [14,15], dispersion
PCMs with the high conductivity particles [16,17], etc.

https://doi.org/10.1016/j.applthermaleng.2017.10.030
1359-4311/Ó 2017 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.
270 C. Ji et al. / Applied Thermal Engineering 129 (2018) 269–279
Nomenclature
cp heat capacity (J=kg  K)
d distance between neighbor fins (m)
ER enhancement ratio (%)
~
g gravitational acceleration (m=s2 )
H enthalpy (kJ/kg)
DH latent enthalpy (kJ/kg)
h sensible enthalpy (kJ/kg)
k thermal conductivity (W/mK)
L length of container (m)
Lh latent heat of fusion (kJ/kg)
Lp length of copper plate (m)
l length of fin (m)
MF melt fraction (1)
p pressure (Pa)
q00 heat flux (W=m2 )
T temperature (°C)
T0 initial temperature (°C)
Among these enhancement methods, the fins acting as thermal
conductivity enhancers, are the most popular due to their high effi-
ciency and low cost, particularly at the system size. Extensive stud-
ies exploring the impact of fins on the overall PCM melting and
solidification have been reported [18–21]. Hosseinizadeh et al.
[22] presented both experimental and numerical studies on the
thermal management of a PCM-based heat sink. The effects of var-
ious parameters such as number of fins, fin height, fin thickness
and power levels were investigated. The results indicated that
increasing the number of fins, fin height and power input resulted
in an appreciable improvement on the overall thermal perfor-
mance, while increasing the fin thickness only gave a slight influ-
ence. Fin configuration was also studied as an influence factor for
PCM melting or solidification acceleration. Sciacovelli et al. [23]
proposed tree shaped fins to enhance the performance of a shell-
and-tube LHTES unit. The geometry of Y-shaped fins with one
and two bifurcations were optimized through the combined use
of CFD modeling and response surface method. The results
reported that the system energy efficiency increased about 24%
with the new fins added. Sheikholeslami et al. [24] also designed
an innovative fin configuration based on snowflake crystal struc-
ture to enhance the performance of LHTES during the discharging
process. They found that the discharging process by applying
snowflake shaped fins was significantly accelerated, and it didn’t
reduce maximum energy storage capacity considerably.
A critical reason that the fins can enhance the PCM melting is
because the heat contact area is largely extended. The heat gener-
ated from sources can be transferred quickly to the low conductive
PCMs with the high conductive metal fins [25]. Meanwhile, natural
convection driven by the buoyancy force could also affect the heat
transfer behavior in the transient heat storage process when PCMs
melt from solid to liquid [26]. Kamkari et al. [27] presented an
experimental investigation of the PCM melting in a transparent
rectangular enclosure with and without horizontal partial fins.
Photographic observations showed significant melting enhance-
ment in the presence of fins and revealed the important role of nat-
ural convection on the melting process. The results also indicated
that increasing the number of fins from one to three decreased
the melting time and enhanced the total heat transfer rate. Huang
et al. [28] numerically and experimentally investigated the PCM
melting enhancement in a photovoltaic device. By using the fins,
heat transfer within PCMs was improved through the effect of nat-
ural convection. However, using of a large number of fins was
found to limit the advection within PCMs and decrease the
Tl melting temperature (°C)
Ts solidification temperature (°C)
t flow time (s)
tf thickness of fin (m)
~
u velocity vector (m/s)
W width of container (m)
Greek letters
b thermal expansion coefficient (K1 )
c liquid fraction (1)
Dtm melting time saved (s)
h oblique angle of fins (°)
l dynamic viscosity (Pas)
q density (kg=m3 )
ql density of PCM in liquid state (kg=m3 )
qs density of PCM in solid state (kg=m3 )
beneficial effects of natural convection. Sharifi et al. [29] developed
a numerical model and simulated the PCM melting in a square
enclosure with internal horizontal fins. The model accounted the
conduction heat transfer as well as the natural convection. It was
found that the utilization of horizontal rectangular fins initially
promoted rapid melting and then followed by slower melting once
PCMs in the inter-fin regions were liquefied.
Remarkably, in above but not limited to works [27–29] where
PCMs were filled in a rectangular enclosure and heated vertically
from one side, a coincided PCM melting phenomenon was
observed: PCMs at bottom end and furthest away from the heater
plate were always the last to melt regardless of fin installation. This
was caused by natural convection driven flow which moved hotter
PCM fluids to the top and melted the bottom portion slower. The
non-uniform melting was also noticed by Tao et al. [30], and they
explained that it was the natural convection that resulted in larger
non-uniformity for the PCM solid-liquid interface as well as
temperature distribution, and thus affected the heat transfer per-
formance of PCMs.
In the present work, to enhance the overall PCM melting, we
propose using of angled fins to improve the heat transfer unifor-
mity for a PCM-based thermal energy storage (TES) system, where
the PCM RT42 is filled in a rectangular container with a heat source
at the vertical side. To characterize the PCM melting behavior, a
transient numerical model is developed on the basis of enthalpy-
porosity method. The natural convection effect is to be considered
after PCMs melt. The model is validated by the experiments firstly
and then used to investigate the thermal behavior during the phase
change process of the finned PCMs. The key emphasis of this work
is to study the effect of angled fins on the non-uniform heat trans-
fer suppression and PCM melting enhancement. Simulations on
parallel fins in the angle of 0 ; þ15 ; þ30 , 15 and 30 with
PCMs are conducted and analyzed. The No Fin PCM case in the
same enclosure is taken as a baseline for the comparisons. In addi-
tion, the dimensionless fin length and the heat flux input are also
systemically evaluated together with tilting the fins from 0 to
15 .
2. Description of numerical model
2.1. Numerical domain and design of fins
Since the PCM-based TES system is long enough and it can be
simplified to a two-dimensional (2D) geometric model for the
 C. Ji et al. / Applied Thermal Engineering 129 (2018) 269–279 271

Table 1
Thermal and physical properties of materials used.

Property Unit RT42 Copper Stainless

steel
Density of solid qs ½kg=m3  880 8978 8030
Density of liquid ql ½kg=m3  760 – –
Heat capacity cp ½J=kg  K 2000 381 502
Latent heat Lh ½kJ=kg 165 – –
Thermal conductivity k ½W=m  K 0.2 387.6 16.27
Dynamic viscosity l ½kg=m  s 0.0235 – –
Melting temperature T l ½ C 42 – –
Solid temperature T s ½ C 38 – –
Thermal expansion ½K1  0.0001 – –
coefficient b

(a) Boundary layers (b)

Fig. 1. Numerical configuration and boundary condition setup.

(c)
1
Time step: 0.2s
Melt Fraction

0.8
0.6 8296
17215
0.4
29186
0.2
0
0 4000 8000 12000 16000
Time (s)
(d)
1
Mesh number: 17215
Melt Fraction

0.8
0.6
0.4s
0.4 0.2s
0.2 0.1s
0
0 4000 8000 12000 16000
Time (s)

Fig. 3. Mesh generation for the fin-PCM cases with the angle (a) h ¼ 0 (17,215
elements) and (b) h ¼ 15 (17,313 elements); (c) mesh size independence study
with the time step at 0.2 s; (d) time step size independence analysis with the mesh
number about 17,215.

Fig. 2. Design of angled fins: (a) No Fin; parallel fins in angle of (b) 0 ; (c) þ15 ; (d)
þ30 ; (e) 15 and (f) 30 . (Length of container L, fins length l, thickness t f and
distance between the parallel fins d).
numerical simulations. As shown in Fig. 1, the heater plate made
by copper is vertically placed with a dimension of Lp (20 mm) 
W(100 mm), and the power input is determined by a heat flux,
q00 , at the left side of plate. Next to the heater, a rectangular cavity
filled with PCMs measures L(120 mm)  W(100 mm), and it is
enclosed within a stainless steel container with a thickness 1.5
mm on the right and bottom walls, and 3 mm on the top wall. To
prevent the heat loss to the surrounding air, the surfaces of con-
tainer, the top and bottom surfaces of heat plate are all well
wrapped by the insulation materials, which creates the basis for
adiabatic condition assumption used in the numerical simulation
as illustrated in Fig. 1.
With the heat input from the left side, PCMs at the top left in the
container usually melt firstly, and those at the bottom right corner
away from the heater are always the last to melt, as reported in the
previous research works [27–29]. This non-uniform melting [30]
caused by the natural convection inevitably occurs in such kind
of the LHTES system and prolongs the total melting time. To uni-
form the heat transfer and increase the melting rate of PCMs, par-
allel fins in inclined angles are proposed to insert into PCMs in this
work. The parameter of interest is the angle of fin tilted. In order to
find the optimum one, inclined angle h at horizontal (0 ), upward
(þ15 , þ30 ) and downward (15 ; 30 ) is designed for the fins
272 C. Ji et al. / Applied Thermal Engineering 129 (2018) 269–279

as drawn in Fig. 2. The fin thickness and the distance between incompressible flow. The volume change is disregarded when
neighboring fins are denoted by tf ¼ 2 mm and d ¼ 32 mm, respec- PCMs melt from solid to liquid, and the motion of solid PCM is also
tively. The fin length l is set at 30 mm, 60 mm and 90 mm for a neglected during the melting process. The thermophysical proper-
parametric study. All the fins are made of copper for a good heat ties of PCMs, such as the thermal conductivity, viscosity and speci-
conduction. The No Fin PCM case is simulated as a baseline. fic heat, are considered as constants in the simulations. After
To store the thermal energy from the heat source, a commercial enough PCMs melt to liquid, natural convection could be dominant
PCM, RT42, from Rubitherm GmbH company is selected in this during the heat transfer process. The effect of natural convection is
study. Its melting temperature ranges from 38  C to 42  C. Table 1 identified by invoking the Boussinesq approximation, which is
lists the thermal and physical properties of the RT42 as well as the valid for the density variation of buoyancy force:
copper and stainless steel used. q ¼ ql =ðbðT  T l Þ þ 1Þ; ð1Þ
where ql is the density of liquid PCM and b is the thermal expansion
2.2. Governing equations
coefficient.
The governing equations used for the PCM-based TES system
The enthalpy-porosity approach proposed by Voller et al. [31] is
modeling are given as,
employed to simulate the phase change process in the PCM-based
TES system. In this technique, the melting interface is not tracked
(a) continuity equation,
explicitly. Instead, the liquid fraction indicating the portion of the
cell area in the liquid state is defined at each cell in the PCM @
q þ r  ðq~
uÞ ¼ 0; ð2Þ
domain. At each iteration of the simulation, it is calculated accord- @t
ing to the enthalpy balance. The liquid-solid mushy zone is treated
(b) momentum equation,
as a porous zone with porosity equal to the liquid fraction, and
@
evaluated by appropriate momentum sink terms added to the ðq~
uÞ þ r  ðq~uÞ ¼ lr2~
u~ g þ~
u  rp þ q~ S; ð3Þ
momentum equations. Regarding the PCM melting process, the @t
liquid PCM motion is assumed to be a laminar, unsteady and

(a) Mass Fraction

(a)
1

0.8
Melt Fraction

0.6

0.4 2000s 4000s 6000s

0.2 Experiments by Kamkari et al. [32]

Current Simulation

0
0 2000 4000 6000 8000 10000 12000
Time (s)
(b) 70 8000s 10000s 12000s
(b)
Temperature
90
92

88 86 84 100
60 96
82 8688

82 92
88
82
Temperature (°C)

84
T12 (Exp.) 80
50 80 80 80
78 76
T12 (Num.) 78 78 72
76 78 76 68
74

T21 (Exp.) 76
70 76 64
40 70 74
0
60
T21 (Num.) 66 68 766 56
64 66 56
62 52
T30 (Exp.) 62 4 48
60 60 38 2 44
30 58 58
T30 (Num.) 56 56 40
36
54 5
52 4 32
50 52
50 38 28
20 50 6 40 24
0 2000 4000 6000 8000 10000 12000 46 4
44 20
Time (s) 40 Unit: ºC

Fig. 4. Comparison of (a) melt fraction and (b) temperature profiles at point T 12 ; T 21 Fig. 5. (a) Contours of the melt fraction with natural convection driven flow vectors
and T 30 from the Kamkari et al. [32] experimental tests and current numerical for the No Fin case, with the heat flux input q00 ¼ 2500 W=m2 ; (b) temperature
predictions. distribution in the PCM domain at t = 10,000 s.
 C. Ji et al. / Applied Thermal Engineering 129 (2018) 269–279 273

Mass Fraction

Horizontal

(a)

Upward

(b)

(c)

Downward

(d)

(e)

2000s 4000s 6000s 8000s 10000s 12000s

Fig. 6. Contours of the melt fraction with natural convection driven flow vectors for the fin-PCM cases: (a) h ¼ 0 ; (b) h ¼ þ15 ; (c) h ¼ þ30 ; (d) h ¼ 15 and (e) h ¼ 30 ,
with the fixed dimensionless fin length l=L ¼ 0:50 and heat flux input q00 ¼ 2500 W=m2 .

(c) energy equation, And the sensible enthalpy h can be expressed as,
Z
@ T
ðqHÞ þ r  ðq~
uHÞ ¼ r  ðkrTÞ; ð4Þ h ¼ href þ cp DT; ð8Þ
@t T ref

where q is the density, ~

u is the velocity vector, H is the enthalpy, p is where href is the reference enthalpy at the reference temperature
the pressure, l is the dynamic viscosity, k is the thermal conductiv- T ref , and cp is the specific heat. The latent enthalpy DH can be writ-
ity and ~
g is the gravity acceleration. ten in terms of the latent heat of the material Lh ,
DH ¼ cLh ; ð9Þ
The source term ~S in momentum equation (Eq. (3)) due to the
reduced porosity in the mushy zone takes the following form: which changes between zero (for a solid) and Lh (for a liquid), as
0 < c < 1.
~ ð1  cÞ 2
At the initial time, PCMs in the solid state, copper heater and
S ¼ Amush 3 ~
u; ð5Þ
c þe stainless steel container are all assumed at a room temperature
T 0 ¼ 26:5  C. The boundary conditions applied to the computa-
where Amush , the mushy zone constant, measures the amplitude of
tional domain in Fig. 1 are set as,
the damping. The higher this value, the steeper the transition of
the velocity to zero when the material solidifies. It varies between
(a) heat flux q00 at the left side of the heater plate:
104 to 107 [11] and sets at 105 at this paper. e is a small value
@T
and takes 0.001 here to prevent the division by zero. c is the liquid k ¼ q00 ; ð10Þ
fraction to characterize the phase change between the solid and liq- @x
uid state when the temperature is T s < T < T l , and it is defined as: (b) adiabatic boundary conditions at the surfaces of container,
8 the top and bottom surfaces of the heater plate:
>
<0 if T < T s ;
c¼ TT s
if T s < T < T l ; ð6Þ @T
> T l T s k ¼ 0 for surfaces at the left and right sides; ð11Þ
: @x
1 if T l < T:
and
The enthalpy H in the energy equation (Eq. (4)) is computed as
@T
the sum of the sensible and latent enthalpy, k ¼ 0 for surfaces at the top and bottom sides:
@y
H ¼ h þ DH: ð7Þ ð12Þ
274 C. Ji et al. / Applied Thermal Engineering 129 (2018) 269–279

(a) (b) (c)

80
82

84
78 82 82 80 84
78 88 86
76 82
78 84
80

82 82
78 78 76 80
76 80
74 80
74 74 76 76 78 78
78 86
82 82 76 76
76

82
72 76 72 74 80
72 74 80 74 74
72 70 76 70 72 70 72
70 78 70
72 68 66 64 68 64 68 68 68 70
8

80
5 66 68

76
68 66 64 62 66 66
62 62 38 64 58
60
62 50
40 60 64 4454
58 60 38 60
746 38 56 56 58 38
4 58 54 54 54
56 50

52
54 52
52 50 50 50 44
48 48 42
46 46 38 48 38 38
42 38 46 44 42 40 40
44 42 40 44 42
(d) (e) Temperature
100

84
848280 78 82 80 78 76 96
76

74
76 74 92
72 88
76 70 84
74 74 74 70 80
72
76

68 70 76
72 70 72
72 72 66 68 5262 68

86
82 70 70 64 66 38 64
78 60 84 38 60
72 68 44 84
38 82 82 62 64 56
70 66 82 52
78 80 60 62
68 7066 48

46
62 64 7270
60 58 44
62 60

42
8 6460 40
82 5 56 58 58 58 36
54 86 54 56
78 84 32
72 52 52 54 28
64 82 50 5052 38
60 24
56 48 80 48
54 78 20
38

44 40 7470 44 2 40
44
46

50 48 42 68 4 Unit: ºC

Fig. 7. Temperature contours lines in the PCM domain at t = 10,000 s: (a) h ¼ 0 ; (b) h ¼ þ15 ; (c) h ¼ þ30 ; (d) h ¼ 15 and (e) h ¼ 30 , with the fixed dimensionless fin
length l=L ¼ 0:50 and heat flux input q00 ¼ 2500 W=m2 .

The commercial software ANSYS Fluent 17.1 is employed to
solve the governing equations on basis of the finite volume
method. The SIMPLEC algorithm is selected for the pressure-
velocity coupling, and the PRESTO! scheme is adopted for pressure
correction equations. The momentum and energy equations are
discretized by the second-order upwind scheme. The under relax-
ation value factors for pressure, velocity, energy and liquid fraction
are set at 0.3, 0.2, 1.0 and 0.9, respectively. The convergence crite-
4
rion is 10 for velocity and continuity components, and 10 for
energy equation. The meshes of computational configuration are
generated in structural as shown in Fig. 3(a) and (b). The mesh
edge size is set about 1 mm and boundary layers are added around
the PCM domain.
To avoid the effects of gird and time step size on the numerical
accuracy, three gird sizes at 8,296, 17,215 and 29,186 are investi-
gated on the 0 fins case for the gird independence study, and the
time step sizes at 0.1 s, 0.2 s and 0.4 s are examined for a reasonable
time step setting. Simulation results of the PCM melting rate are
plotted at Fig. 3(c) and (d). After the comparisons, mesh with
17,215 elements and time step at 0.2 s are chosen in this study.
3. Results and discussion
geometric similarity allows it to serve as a model validation case in
this work. One set of their experiments with the enclosure inclina-
tion angle of 90 and input wall temperature at 70  C is chosen for
current validation. More details of setup can be referred to their
work [32]. The melt fraction evolution with time is firstly calcu-
lated and compared, which is defined as:
ZZ
S½T>T l 
MF ¼ dxdy; ð13Þ
8 S½total
where S½T>T l  is the area that PCMs have completely melted to liquid
if their temperature is higher than the melting temperature T l , and
S½total is the total area of PCMs at initial solid state. Good agreement
between the experimental test and current modeling is observed in
Fig. 4(a). The temperature profiles at the three thermocouple
locations T 12 ; T 21 and T 30 set in their experimental test are also
compared with the simulations as shown in Fig. 4(b). It can be
found that the predicted results match again with the experiment
measurements in general. The minor difference could be caused
by the PCM properties varying with temperature during the exper-
iments, while they are considered constant in the modeling as usual
simulations doing. Thus, the developed numerical model is well
verified for the phase change study.

3.1. Verification of numerical models 3.2. Non-uniform melting caused by the natural convection

In order to validate the developed computational model for Fig. 5(a) presents the melting process for the No Fin PCM case in
phase change simulations, initial runs are performed and com- a rectangular enclosure, with the natural convection driven flow
pared with the LHTES experimental tests conducted by Kamkari described by arrows. The flow time t is selected at 2000 s, 4000 s,
et al. [32]. The dynamic thermal behaviors of the PCM (lauric acid) 6000 s, 8000 s, 10,000 s and 12,000 s. It can be easily observed that
melting in a rectangular enclosure at various inclination angles by an uniform heating (q00 ¼ 2500 W=m2 ) at the left side of the cop-
were studied in their work. The enclosure was heated isothermally per plate, PCMs melt from the top left corner at first, then to the
from one side while the other walls were thermally insulated. The central part, and finally complete at the bottom right corner of
 C. Ji et al. / Applied Thermal Engineering 129 (2018) 269–279 275

the enclosure. The PCM melting rate at the upside is obviously (a)
faster than the downside during the entire processes. The reason
1
caused the phenomena is the high temperature liquid PCMs flow
to the upside after melting, under the driven of natural convection,
0.8
while PCMs at the downside are still below the melting point. This
can be proven by the temperature contour lines in the PCM domain

Melt Fraction
as drawn in Fig. 5(b). At t = 10,000 s, the liquid PCMs at the top
0.6 Time saved (s)
right part have reached 80  C and even higher, however, the bot- 1200
tom left parts are still at 38–54  C, which shows a big temperature
difference with the top part. This non-uniform heat transfer leads
0.4
to the top part of PCMs overheating and thermal energy stored in 600
the sensible heat form, meanwhile, it makes PCMs at the bottom
side melting slowly. Thus, the behavior of non-uniform heat trans-
0.2
fer resulted from the natural convection weakens the overall PCM 0
0 +15 +30 −15 −30
melting rate in the container. Fin angle θ (º)
0
0 2000 4000 6000 8000 10000 12000 14000 16000
3.3. Characterization of angled fins on PCM melting enhancement Time (s)
(b) 20
With the parallel fins in a dimensionless fin length l=L ¼ 0:5 No Fin
added, the PCM melting processes are changed as performed in
θ = 0°
Fig. 6(a) to (e), under the constant heat flux input q00 ¼ 2500
15 θ = +15°
W=m2 . Initially, at t ¼ 2000 s, PCMs around fins also melt due to

Enhancement Ratio (%)

the heat conduction in domination. Later, at t ¼ 4000 s, the natural
convection generates and moves the liquid PCM flowing. The
development of PCM solid-liquid interface for each case is depen-
dent on the fin angle setting: h at 0 , PCMs at top and middle part
melt together due to the heat transfer by the fins, however, the
bottom part is still in the solid state, and the non-uniformity exists
as the No Fin case; h at þ15 and þ30 , PCMs at the top side melt
much faster since more heat is transferred to the top part along the
fins, which results in the non-uniform melting aggravated;
remarkably, h at 15 and 30 , the top, middle and the bottom
PCMs melt simultaneously, because the downward angled fins dis-
tribute part of heat to the bottom side. And thus, the melting rates
at the upper and lower part are more uniform. As t marches to
6000 s and 12,000 s, PCMs in the inter-fin regions have been lique-
fied, thus, parallel fins with the limited length l=L ¼ 0:5 are not as
influential as before in driving the melting process. The rest solid
PCMs independently melt by the heat conduction and convection
from the liquid ones, based on the solid-liquid interface already
formed. PCMs with 15 and 30 fins show faster melting rate
until to the end, which is because the PCM melting fronts shaped
at t ¼ 6000 s are more uniform from top to bottom of the con-
tainer, comparing with the 0 ; þ15 and þ30 fins cases. Fig. 7(a)
to (e) compares the temperature contours in the PCM domain for
above fin-PCM cases, when the flow time is chosen at 10,000 s. It
can be found that 15 fins have more uniform temperature distri-
bution than the 0 fins from the top to bottom, meanwhile, 30
fins make the bottom PCMs temperature much higher than the
melting point 42  C, and þ15 and þ30 fins enlarge the tempera-
ture differences between the top and bottom PCMs.
The melt fraction for each case, as defined in Eq. (13), is
calculated and plotted in Fig. 8(a). Compared with No Fin one,
the melting rates of the finned PCMs are enhanced, no matter
how the fin angle h is settled. Moreover, PCMs with fins in 15
perform fastest on the melting rate, followed by 30 and 0 ones,
and PCMs with þ15 and þ30 fins show slower. To reveal how
much the melting time is reduced with the inclined fins, the saved
PCM melting time is counted on the basis of No Fin case:
Dtm ¼ t m ðhÞ  tm ðNo FinÞ, and shown at the bottom right part of
Fig. 8(a). When the parallel fins are set in 0 ; Dt m is about 840 s;
while drops to 460 s and 240 s with the fins directing upward in
þ15 and þ30 , about 45.2% and 71.4% decreasing on the 0 fin
case; however, with the downward angle 15 and 30 fins, Dts
can increase to 1040 s and 900 s. It is about a maximum 23.85%
θ = +30°
θ = −15°
10 θ = −30°
5
0
0 2000 4000 6000 8000 10000 12000 14000 16000
Time (s)
Fig. 8. Comparison of (a) melt fraction, melting time saved and (b) melting
enhancement ratio for the cases: No Fin, h ¼ 0 ; þ15 ; þ30 ; 15 and 30 with
l=L ¼ 0:5 and q00 ¼ 2500 W=m2 .
improvement just with the fin angle setting from 0 to 15 , mean-
while, both the fin and PCM areas/weights still remain unchanged.
The enhancement ratio ER is also calculated in Fig. 8(b) to
identify how the PCM melting is affected by the angled fins:
MF ðhÞ  MF ðNo FinÞ
ER ¼  100%; ð14Þ
1:0
where MF ðhÞ means the melt fraction of PCMs with the fin angle h,
and MF ðNo FinÞ is taken from the No Fin case for a reference value.
At the initial 4000 s, the ER increases rapidly as the fins dominate
the heat transfer in this period. A negative value appears around
500 s at all fin-PCM cases, which means their melting rates are
slower than the No Fin case. The reason is part of heat is firstly
transferred to the fins themselves at the early stage. The difference
of all cases during the initial period is the maximum value ER;Max
they can reach. For the fins in 0 and 15 , the ER;Max increases by
nearly 13% on the No Fin case, while just 10% for fins in 30 . It
is because the part of heat is transported to the top or bottom walls
that the tips of 30 fins are quite close to. After t over 4000 s, ER of
all cases begins to decline, among which, h at 15 drops slowest
and remains the maximum until to the end. h at 30 shows a trend
of fall-rise-fall, and its value exceeds the þ15 fins at 9000 s, then
the 0 fins at 12,000 s. So the angled fins to enhance the PCM melt-
ing mainly take effect at the second half of whole melting process.
276 C. Ji et al. / Applied Thermal Engineering 129 (2018) 269–279
l/L = 0.25
(a)
(b)
l/L = 0.50
(c)
(d)
l/L = 0.75
(e)
(f)
2000s 4000s 6000s
Fig. 9. Contours of the melt fraction with natural convection driven flow for the cases: (a) l=L ¼ 0:25; h ¼ 0 ; (b) l=L ¼ 0:25; h ¼ 15 ; (c) l=L ¼ 0:50; h ¼ 0 ; (d)
l=L ¼ 0:50; h ¼ 15 ; (e) l=L ¼ 0:75; h ¼ 0 ; (f) l=L ¼ 0:75; h ¼ 15 , when the heat flux input q00 is set at 2500 W=m2 .
3.4. Effects of fin length with the inclined angles
To investigate fin length effect on the PCM melting when the
fins are settled from 0 to 15 , the fins in the dimensionless
length l=L of 0.25, 0.5 and 0.75 inserted into PCMs are simulated.
Meanwhile, heat flux input is fixed as: q00 ¼ 2500 W=m2 .
The melt fraction contours are listed from Fig. 9(a)-(f). By the
comparisons, it can be seen that the PCM melting processes with
l=L setting at 0.25 are almost same for h at 0 and 15 , which
means the melting effect by a downward angle is not obvious at
such fin length. When l=L rises to 0.5, the melting process differ-
ences between 0 and 15 are apparent. Compared with h at 0 ,
PCMs at the bottom melt faster since part of heat is guided to
the bottom side by the 15 downward fins. By further increasing
l=L to 0.75, the PCM melting processes with the fins in 15 show
distinctive features against with 0 fins. As the longer fins extend to
the bottom right corner of the enclosure, PCMs at the bottom part
melt fast during the whole process, and the top part also melt
together because of the natural convection driven flow, which con-
tinuously transports the heat from the bottom to the top. There-
fore, with the 15 fins, the non-uniform melting is suppressed
obviously and the overall PCM melting rate increases considerably.
It is indicated that the angled fins in 15 have a demonstrable
effect on the PCM melting enhancement when l=L rises to 0.75.
Fig. 10(a) and (b) further explains the above improvement by com-
paring the temperature distributions at t ¼ 10; 000 s. The temper-
ature of PCMs at the top part for h ¼ 0 is about 70  C, while the
bottom part is still at 38–42  C. With the fins directing to 15 ,
Mass Fraction
8000s 10000s 12000s
the temperature of the top PCMs drops to 62  C, and the bottom
part is over 42  C as PCMs fully melt. It directly gives the fact that
the 15 fins make the heat transfer much more uniform than the
0 fins, when l=L is lengthened to 0.75.
Fig. 11(a) illustrates the melt fraction MF of each fin-PCM case.
When h changes from 0 to 15 , the increment of the melting
rate becomes more obvious with increasing l=L from 0.25, 0.5 to
0.75. An appreciable improvement is observed for the 15 fins
with l=L ¼ 0:75. Dt m , based on the No Fin case, is also charted
at the bottom right part of Fig. 11(a). For l=L ¼ 0:25 and
h ¼ 0 ; Dt m is about 540 s, and improves to 640 s with h directing
to 15 , thus, Dt m rises about 18.5%; for l=L ¼ 0:50; Dtm
approaches to 1040 s from 840 s since h points to 15 from 0 ,
and the increment of Dt m is about 23.8%; for l=L ¼ 0:75; Dtm is
1180 s with h at 0 , while increases to 1920 s as h drops to
15 , and Dtm goes up about 62.7%. Therefore, it can be easily
yielded that the PCM melting enhancement becomes more effi-
cient by increasing l=L, when the fins are set with the inclined
angle 15 from 0 . Fig. 11(b) plots the melting enhancement
ratio ER of the above fin-PCM cases. Several specific features can
be highlighted: (1) when l=L rises from 0.25, 0.5 to 0.75, the
ER;Max has an increment about 7%, 13% and 16% on the No Fin
PCM case; (2) the improvement of ER resulting from inclined fins
mainly appears at the latter half of the melting process; and (3)
the major addition of ER is more notable with lengthening l=L,
especially for the case of l=L ¼ 0:75, a considerable enhancement
is observed from t ¼ 8000 s to 12,000 s, when the fin angle h is
tilted from 0 to 15 .
 C. Ji et al. / Applied Thermal Engineering 129 (2018) 269–279 277

Unit: ºC No Fin θ = 0°, l/L = 0.25

Temperature: 20 28 36 44 52 60 68 76 84 92 100 θ = −15°, l/L = 0.25
(a)
76 74 θ = 0°, l/L = 0.50 θ = 0°, l/L = 0.75
72 θ = −15°, l/L = 0.50 θ = −15°, l/L = 0.75
70
1
74 72 72 70

72

70
0.8
68

68
74
72
70

Melt Fraction
70 0.6 Time saved (s)
66 2000
70 66
68

64 64 θ = 0°
62 θ = −15°
60 56 0.4
72 6 0 58 44 1000
2
656 54 38
50 0.2
50 46 42
48 44 0
0.25 0.5 0.75
46 38
Fin length (l/L)
44 42 40 0
0 2000 4000 6000 8000 10000 12000 14000 16000
(b) Time (s)
74
70 68 20
72

66
64
62
62 15
62

Enhancement Ratio (%)

62 62 60
60 58
76 58 58 58
74 10
56 56
60

72
68 54
66
64 2 54
40 52

6 6058 5
5 6 54
52 50 52
76 50
74 48
72 48 0
70 68 38 38
64 62 42 0 2000 4000 6000 8000 10000 12000 14000 16000
58 52 Time (s)
46 42
Fig. 11. Comparison of (a) melt fraction, melting time saved and (b) melting
Fig. 10. Temperature contours lines in the PCM domain at t = 10,000 s: (a) h ¼ 0 enhancement ratio for fin angle h ¼ 0 and 15 , when the dimensionless fin length
and (b) h ¼ 15 , with l=L ¼ 0:75 and q00 ¼ 2500 W=m2 . l=L increases from the 0.25, 0.5 to 0.75 with q00 ¼ 2500 W=m2 .

s; q00 at 3500 W=m2 , it declines further to 180 s. It can be concluded

3.5. Effects of heat flux input for tilting fins
The heat flux input is also examined as a parameter that could
affect the PCM melting, when the fin angle h is set at 0 and 15 .
The heat flux q00 is input from 1500, 2500 to 3500 W=m2 at the
heater side. The fin dimensionless length l=L ¼ 0:5 is chosen as
the constant.
The melt fraction evolution is plotted in Fig. 12(a), and it can be
easily found that with the heat flux input q00 rising, the PCM melt-
ing rate accelerates a lot, no matter whether the fin angle h is 0 or
15 . Accordingly, the total melting time reduces from 19,000 s,
13,000 s to 10,000 s, since the heat conduction and convection
becomes stronger with a larger heat flux input.
The PCM melting time difference by the different fin angle set-
ting is then compared for an analysis as shown in Fig. 12(b). When
the heat flux input q00 is at 1500 W=m2 , the melting time difference
(t m ð0 Þ  tm ð15 Þ) caused by fin angle h varying from 0 to 15 is
about 350 s; q00 at 2500 W=m2 , the time difference reduces to 200
that the fins in a downward angle 15 work effectively for the
PCM melting enhancement with a lower heat flux input q00 at
1500 W=m2 . When the heat flux input increases, the effect from
inclined fins setting is diminished for the PCM melting.
4. Conclusions
The paper performed numerical studies on the phase change
heat transfer inside the PCM-based rectangular TES system. RT42
was chosen as the thermal storage medium. The heat was verti-
cally transferred to PCMs from a side-placed heater plate. To
enhance the PCM melting for thermal energy storage, parallel fins
with the inclined angles were proposed. A 2D transient numerical
model was built on the basis of Navier Stokes equations in the
presence of natural convection. The enthalpy-porosity method
was employed for the phase change simulation. After validated
by the existed experimental data, the developed model was
adopted for the numerical simulations on the finned PCM melting.
278 C. Ji et al. / Applied Thermal Engineering 129 (2018) 269–279

(a) 1 container during the whole melting process. The temperature

inside the whole PCM domain presented much more uniform than
that in the 0 fins case. The better heat transfer distribution by the
15 fins obviously suppressed the non-uniform melting and
0.8 accelerated the melting rate. Dtm improved 62.7% compared with
the same length fins in 0 . The heat flux input also affected the
Melt Fraction

PCM melting with the angled fins, but not much. The fins in
0.6
15 performed a little bit more efficiently when the heat flux
θ = 0°, q”= 1500W/m2 input was lower.
θ = 0°, q”= 2500W/m
2
0.4
θ = 0°, q” = 3500W/m
2 Acknowledgement

0.2 θ = −15°, q”= 1500W/m 2

The work was funded under the Energy Innovation Research
θ = −15°, q”= 2500W/m2 Programme (EIRP, Award No. NRF2013EWT-EIRP001-017), admin-
θ = −15°, q”= 3500W/m2 istrated by the Energy Market Authority (EMA), Singapore. The
0 EIRP is a competitive grant call initiative driven by the Energy
0 4000 8000 12000 16000 20000
Time (s) Innovation Programme Office, and funded by the National Research
(b) Foundation (NRF) Singapore.
400
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