CFD investigation of a sensible packed bed thermal energy storage system with different porous materials

A sensible packed bed thermal energy storage system is numerically investigated in this study. The packed bed porous system has air as heat transfer fluid and solid spheres as thermal storage material. Steel, cordierite and rock spheres are used as solid part of porous medium. These materials are convenient for thermal energy storage at high temperature. The governing equations are solved by using the commercial ANSYS fluent software. The local thermal non-equilibrium model (LTNE) is used for heat transfer in the porous medium. The problem is analyzed in transient time. The fluid thermo-physical properties are temperature dependent, the solid’s properties assumed as constant. The results showed that the kind of material, the porosity of the packed bed, and the mass flow rate effect on the thermal energy storage and the storage time.