Abstract
Using renewable energy sources is possible via thermal energy storage (TES) systems which use phase change materials (PCMs) to store energy. PCMs store and release a large amount of energy in terms of their high melting heat. This study considered paraffin as PCM within the porous carbon matrix and copper oxide (CuO) as the nanoparticles (NPs). The molecular dynamics (MD) simulation method studied the simulated structure's phase transition process. The effect of atomic porosity and the initial pressure (IP) was considered and used in the atomic samples to survey the studied structure's thermal performance (TP). For this purpose, the changes in the charge time, discharge time, heat flux (HF), and phase transition time (PTT) were studied. The temperature and the total energy (TE) converged to 300 K and-1580 eV after 5 ns. It indicated that the defined matrix was physically stable. The increase in porosity from 1 % to 3 % increased HF from 1452 to 1642 W/m2 and decreased PTT from 3.92 to 3.73 ns. But, a further increase in porosity reduced the TP of simulated samples. On the other hand, the results show that the simulated atomic structure's TP was reduced by increasing the IP. HF decreased from 1452 to 987 W/m2 (1 to 5 % range), and the PTT increased from 3.92 to 4.05 ns (1 to 3 % range).