Thermal Performance of MEMS-Based Heat Exchanger with Micro-Encapsulated PCM Slurry

Abstract

Latent heat thermal energy storage technique has demonstrate to be a better engineering option mainly due to its benefit of supplying higher energy storage density in a smaller temperature difference between retrieval and storage. For this purpose, a micro electro-mechanical system, MEMS-based heat exchanger with microencapsulated PCM (MEPCM) slurry as cold fluid, has been simulated three dimensionally. This work investigates the influence of using MEPCM-slurry on the temperature of the cold and hot fluids. The MEPCM and water properties have been considered temperature dependent. MEPCM-slurry is used with different volume fractions. The result shows that using MEPCM with 25% volume fraction leads to the improvement in fluids temperatures, that is, for hot fluid the rate of temperature reduction increases up to 23.5% and for cold fluid the rate of temperature rise decreases to 9%, compared to using only water in the MEMS.

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Mehravar, S. and Sabbaghi, S. (2014) Thermal Performance of MEMS-Based Heat Exchanger with Micro-Encapsulated PCM Slurry. Journal of Power and Energy Engineering, 2, 15-22. doi: 10.4236/jpee.2014.29003.

Conflicts of Interest

The authors declare no conflicts of interest.

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