Document Type

Article

Publication Date

1-1-2016

Department

Mechanical Engineering

Abstract

Phase change materials (PCM) in the construction industry became attractive because of several interesting attributes, such as thermo-physical parameters, open air atmospheric condition usage, cost and the duty structure requirement. Thermal performance optimization of PCMs in terms of proficient storage of a large amount of heat or cold in a finite volume remains a challenging task. Implementation of PCMs in buildings to achieve thermal comfort for a specific climatic condition in Iraq is our main focus. From this standpoint, the present paper reports the experimental and numerical results on the lowering of heat flux inside a residential building using PCM, which is composed of oil (40%) and wax (60%). This PCM (paraffin), being plentiful and cost-effective, is extracted locally from waste petroleum products in Iraq. Experiments are performed with two rooms of identical internal dimensions in the presence and absence of PCM. A two-dimensional numerical transient heat transfer model is developed and solved using the finite difference method. A relatively simple geometry is chosen to initially verify the numerical solution procedure by incorporating in the computer program two-dimensional elliptic flows. It is demonstrated that the heat flux inside the room containing PCM is remarkably lower than the one devoid of PCM. © 2016 by the authors.

DOI

10.3390/en9010030

Publication Title

Energies

Comments

At the time of publication, Seyed Ehsan Hosseini was affiliated with Universiti Teknologi Malaysia.

This is an open access article.

Original Citation: Akeiber, H.J., Hosseini, S.E., Wahid, M.A., Hussen, H.M., & Mohammad, A.T. (2016). Phase Change Materials-Assisted Heat Flux Reduction: Experiment and Numerical Analysis. Energies, 9(1): Article 30. doi: 10.3390/en9010030.

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