Experimental investigation on eliminating supercooling nature of ice and improving its energy storage performance to establish an energy-efficient cold thermal storage

•Charging performance of ice enhanced using Aluminium honeycomb core (AHC).•AHC inclusion only leads to minimal reduction (1.91%) in energy storage density.•Inclusion of AHC reduces charging time by 30.23% & enhances charging rate by 43.54%.•Higher effective utilisation ratio (6.13 to 6.48) can be achieved using AHC.•The proposed method is highly reliable, practically feasible and economically viable.