Experimental analysis of a novel device for accelerating the energy storage rate of phase change materials

Phase change materials (PCMs) are widely used in new energy storage fields such as industrial waste heat recovery and solar heat recovery. However, the low thermal conductivity of PCMs causes the slow heat storage efficiency of PCMs, resulting in a large waste of waste heat. For the sake of increasing the heat storage rate of PCMs, a new type of pulsating heat pipe (PHP) phase change heat storage device is designed, which couples PHP with PCMs. For sake of further improve the heat storage efficiency of the novel device, a different filling working medium was used in the experiment. The results show that methanol is the best charging working fluid compared with water and ethanol, the corresponding heat storage time of methanol was reduced by 2500 seconds and 900 seconds, respectively. Therefore, methanol is the best charging medium, followed by water and ethanol.