TY  - EJOU
AU  - Abera, Matiewos Mekonen 
AU  - Ancha, Venkata Ramayya 
AU  - Amare, Balewgize 
AU  - Sundar, L. Syam 
AU  - Mouli, Kotturu V. V. Chandra 
AU  - Sangaraju, Sambasivam 

TI  - Simulation and Optimization of Energy Efficiency and Total Enthalpy Analysis of Sand Based Packed Bed Solar Thermal Energy Storage
T2  - Frontiers in Heat and Mass Transfer

PY  - 2024
VL  - 22
IS  - 4
SN  - 2151-8629

AB  - 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.
KW  - Optimization; solar thermal energy storage; Taguchi method; COMSOL multiphysics; packed bed thermal storage; charging time

DO  - 10.32604/fhmt.2024.049525