Open Access

ARTICLE

Simulation and Optimization of Energy Efficiency and Total Enthalpy Analysis of Sand Based Packed Bed Solar Thermal Energy Storage

Matiewos Mekonen Abera^1,2,*, Venkata Ramayya Ancha¹, Balewgize Amare¹, L. Syam Sundar³, Kotturu V. V. Chandra Mouli⁴, Sambasivam Sangaraju⁵
1 Faculty of Mechanical Engineering, Jimma Institute of Technology, Jimma University, P.O. Box 378, Jimma, Ethiopia
2 Aksum University, Shire Campus, Aksum, P.O. Box 1010, Ethiopia
3 Department of Mechanical Engineering, College of Engineering, Prince Mohammad Bin Fahd University, Al-Khobar, 31952, Saudi Arabia
4 Department of Mechanical and Industrial Engineering, College of Engineering, Majmaah University, Al-Majmaah, 11952, Saudi Arabia
5 National Water and Energy Center, United Arab Emirates University, Al Ain, 15551, United Arab Emirates
* Corresponding Author: Matiewos Mekonen Abera. Email:
(This article belongs to the Special Issue: Entropy Generation and Exergy Analysis of Thermal Devices)

Frontiers in Heat and Mass Transfer https://doi.org/10.32604/fhmt.2024.049525

Received 10 January 2024; Accepted 22 March 2024; Published online 08 July 2024

Abstract

This study is focused on the simulation and optimization of packed-bed solar thermal energy storage by using sand as a storage material and hot-water is used as a heat transfer fluid and storage as well. The analysis has been done by using the COMSOL multi-physics software and used to compute an optimization charging time of the storage. Parameters that control this optimization are storage height, storage diameter, heat transfer fluid flow rate, and sand bed particle size. The result of COMSOL multi-physics optimized thermal storage has been validated with Taguchi method. Accordingly, the optimized parameters of storage are: storage height of 1.4 m, storage diameter of 0.4 m, flow rate of 0.02 kg/s, and sand particle size 12 mm. Among these parameters, the storage diameter result is the highest influenced optimized parameter of the thermal storage from the ANOVA analysis. For nominal packed bed thermal storage, the charging time needed to attain about 520 K temperature is more than 3500 s, while it needs only about 2000 s for the optimized storage which is very significant difference. Average charging energy efficiency of the optimized is greater than the nominal and previous concrete-based storage by 13.7%, and 13.1%, respectively in the charging time of 2700 s.

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Keywords

Optimization; solar thermal energy storage; Taguchi method; COMSOL multiphysics; packed bed thermal storage; charging time

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