Design and assessments on a hybrid pin fin-metal foam structure towards enhancing melting heat transfer: An experimental study

Solar energy, as a kind of renewable energy, offers a large reserve to be harvested at a reasonably low cost for engineering applications. To decouple the temporal and spatial relevance of the continuous energy supply of solar energy, latent heat thermal energy storage can deal with this problem at different temperatures. Aiming to improve energy efficiency, a novel hybrid metal foam-pin fin structure is designed and assessed. Upon conducting measurements on a well-designed experimental bench, the phase change processes of paraffin that is filled in fins, metal foam, and a combination of both (hybrid structure) are evaluated. During the experiments, the transient melting interface is snapshotted and temperature development is documented under five different heat source temperatures of 61 °C, 63 °C, 65 °C, 68 °C, and 70 °C. In the foreground of the novel hybrid structure, each segment of the hybrid is also justified and discussed. Results indicate that the hybrid structure augments marked heat transfer. Compared to pure PCM, complete melting time decreases by 63.4% and simultaneously the temperature response rate increases by 143.9% as implementing the hybrid. Attempts to design hybrid structure find a solution to assess and operate thermal storage applications for solar engineering.