Design of air cooling unit with PCM

Abstract

In this paper a heat absorption unit has been designed to cool the entering hot air. For this aim, five slabs of PCM (Phase change material) have been used inside the cooling unit. The velocity and temperature values of entering hot air respectively are 0.1 m/s and 50 C. Three different cases for PCM design were investigated: in the first case RT 44HC, RT 35HC, RT 31, RT 28HC and RT 25HC as phase change materials were used in such a way that the PCM with higher number gets contact with the hot air first. In the second and third cases only one PCM type were used for the five slabs inside the cooling unit. They are RT 44HC and RT 25HC. Analysis performed for 10h. Results show that although maximum heat absorbed for the first 8h is in the case of only RT 25HC used in the cooling system, after 8h the cooling unit with mixed PCM shows a better performance and minimum exit air temperature has been observed for this case at the end of 10h. © Published under licence by IOP Publishing Ltd.