Effect of Natural Convection on the Heat Transfer in a Latent Heat Storage System

잠열축열시스템의 축열과정에서 자연대류의 영향에 관한 연구

Heat transfer characteristics of a low temperature latent heat storage system during the heat storage stage was examined for the circular finned tubes using fatty acid which shows the big density difference during melting as phase change materials. The heat storage vessel has the dimension of 530 mm height, 74 mm inside diameter and inner heat transfer tube is 480 mm in height and 13.5 mm outside diameter. Hot water was employed as the heat transfer fluid. During the heat storage stage, it was found that both conduction and natural convection were the major heat transfer mechanism. It was also found that the effect of natural convection on the heat transfer was more significant for the unfinned tube system than that for the finned tube system. The experimentally determined overall heat transfer coefficients were in the range of $50{\sim}250W/m^2K$ and the correlation for natural convection heat transfer as a function of Nusselt and Rayleigh number was proposed.