A Numerical Study Concerning the Influence of the Grashof Number in the Indirect Ice Storage Tanks Performance

The present paper deals with typical chiller-based ice storage tanks. Natural convection of water (Phase Change Material-PCM) near its density maximum leads to a peculiar nature of the flow pattern in the liquid phase of the PCM, giving rise to a multi-cellular regime that affects drastically the heat transfers within the tank. So, this work intends to examine numerically how the flow pattern affects qualitatively the performance of such thermal storage devices. This is done by investigating the influence of the non-dimensional parameter Grashof number during the charging operation step of such devices that corresponds to the ice making process occurring within the storage tank. Besides, the tank is assumed to be vertically positioned, as well as their internal tubes through which the secondary fluid flows. In order to analyze the heat transfer between the PCM and one internal tube during the growth of an ice layer around it, one selected a vertical annulus as the physical model. The inner vertical wall represents one of the tubes packed into a typical storage tank, while the outer vertical wall represents the thickness of formed ice around the tube. Regarding the annulus, the top and bottom walls, as well as the outer vertical wall were considered thermally insulated. The thermal analysis is focused in the heat transfer at the inner wall for different values of Grashof, keeping unchanged all other parameters that govern the natural convection problem with phase change. An overview of the cooling process is analyzed through streamlines and isotherms, for specific instants of the physical process. Further, a heat transfer analysis for the total charging stage is presented.