Solidification of an annular finned tube ice storage unit

Increasing building energy consumption rates is leading to significant surcharges for both the peak grid loads and the peak building energy consumption costs. The power load mismatches between user demands and energy supplies can be effectively reduced by ice storage systems. In order to solve the problem of heat transfer attenuation in the cold storage process. This study used a two-dimensional axisymmetric transient model of an annular finned tube ice storage unit to investigate the solidification characteristics and heat transfer rates with water as the storage medium and ethylene glycol as the heat transfer medium. The model was validated against experimental data. The calculations then investigated the effect of the annular fin height and fin spacing on the phase change and the solidification front velocity. The results show that increasing the fin height and decreasing the fin spacing both increase the ice storage solidification rate and improve the cold storage capacity. At a fin height of 50 mm, its solid phase fraction was 4.96 times larger than that of the bare tube. The cold storage capacity with the 50 mm high fins is more than 3.68 times that without fins at 480 min. The 4 mm fin spacing has a 26.3% greater cold storage capacity than the 12 mm fin spacing.