Development and Validation of a Latent Thermal Energy Storage Model Using Modelica

• Main Authors: Dre Helmns, David H. Blum, Spencer M. Dutton, Van P. Carey
• Format: Article
• Language: English
• Published: MDPI AG 2021-01-01
• Series: Energies
• Subjects: thermal energy storage; phase change material; Modelica; latent heat transfer; HVAC
• Online Access: https://www.mdpi.com/1996-1073/14/1/194

An abundance of research has been performed to understand the physics of latent thermal energy storage with phase change material. Some analytical and numerical findings have been validated by experiments, but there are few free and open-source models available to the general public for use in systems simulation and analysis. The Modelica programming language is a good avenue to make such models available, because it is object-oriented, equation-based, declarative, and acausal. These characteristics have enabling the creation of component model libraries that can be used to build larger system simulations for design analysis. The authors have previously developed a numerical framework to model phase change thermal storage and have validated model predictions with experiments. The objectives of this paper are to describe the transfer of the numerical framework to an implementation in a Modelica component model and to validate the Modelica model with data from the experiment and the original numerical framework.