Abstract
The objective of this study is to analyze the behavior of an energy storage system which is made of a horizontal channel crossed by a fluid and whose walls contain a porous medium saturated with phase change material (PCM). We developed a three-dimensional model to study the two processes: thermal energy charging (during PCM melting) and thermal energy discharging (during PCM solidification). The volume averaged energy equation with phase change in the porous medium is discretized by the control volume finite element method (CVFEM). The resulting system of algebraic equations was solved by the bi-conjugate gradient-stabilized iterative solver.,4 series of numerical tests are then undertaken to assess the effects of matrix porosity and PCM type on the rate of charged and released thermal energy.