Melting heat transfer characteristics of a composite phase change material fabricated by paraffin and

metal foam

1. Characteristics of paraffin/metal foam composite PCM, which was consisted of four parts:
rectangular enclosure with the composite PCM, heating system, data acquisition system and
infrared camera or conventional camera.
2. The heating was supplied by a DC voltage power supply, and the electric voltage and current were
measured to determine the heat flux supplied to the composite PCM in the experiments.
3. the composite PCM with a dimension of about 100.0 mm 100.0 mm 10.0 mm
4. The composite PCM was then encaged in a rectangular enclosure made of plexiglass with a
thickness of 5.0 mm, and the left side of the composite PCM was attached with a porcelain heater
which was used to supply heating to melt PCM.
5. The center of the composite PCM, was chosen to monitor the temperatures of the PCM and
ligament of copper foam by using two pre-calibrated T-type thermocouples with the diameter of
about 0.1 mm.
6. The evolvement of solidliquid interface was observed by a conventional camera to investigate
the melting process of the composite PCM. Meanwhile, the temperature field of the outer surface
of the plexiglass enclosure was captured by an infrared camera (Therma CAMTM, FLIR SC325) set
in front of the enclosure, where the outer surface of the plexiglass enclosure was sprayed black
using a typical paint with the surface emissivity of about 0.95.
7. The infrared camera was also calibrated against the thermocouples and its uncertainty was
determined to be about 1.0 C.
8. In the experiments, the temperature measurement by the temperature sensors can only reflect
the characteristics of several local spots, and it is very difficult to obtain the temperature field of
the entire domain. While such information could be possibly provided by using the infrared
camera. In the present study, infrared camera was adopted to detect the temperature of the
outer surface of the plexiglass enclosure, i.e., the plane of z = 20.0 mm.
9. It should be noted that the heat transfer surface must be exposed to the infrared camera during
temperature measurement, and there must be heat loss from the higher temperature of the
enclosure surface to the ambient, resulting in lower temperature than in the real situation
Experimental studies on the use of a phase change material for cooling mobile phones

1) The experimental setup was designed to simulate the operation of a mobile phone when
making outbound or inbound calls. Four different heat sinks (Case A, Case B, Case C and Case
D).
2) To study the effects of fins, Case C and Case D were fabricated with three fins and six fins
respectively. The thickness of all the internal fins is 2 mm. External walls are 7 mm thick.
3) The PCM chosen is n-eicosane. With a melting temperature of 36.5 degree, n-eicosane will
remain in its solid state at room temperature and the melting process should occur during the
mobile phone operation.
4) A 6.35 mm by 6.35 mm thermo foil heater (Minco HK5565R10.0L12B) was attached below
each heat sink.
5) A piece of 3 mm Teflon thermal insulation board with a working temperature of 340 C was
attached below the heater.
6) K-type thermocouples were used to measure the temperatures.
7) Thermal video system TVS-2000 MKII Series Compact Thermo was used to capture the
thermal images. This system allows non-contact surface measurements to be made. The
thermo graphic images are displayed on a LCD monitor with a resolution of 256 gradients.
8) The thermal imager was mounted on a tripod to capture the images of the heat sink as viewed
from the top.

9) The images also show that the temperature distribution with the PCM is evenly spread with
no hot spot.
Experimental investigations on thermal performance enhancement and effect of orientation on porous
matrix filled PCM based heat sink

1) The heat sink is made from an aluminium slab with an overall dimension of 80 62 mm2 base
with height of 25 mm.
2) The thickness of the side wall is 7 mm and the internal cavity is available for a height of 20 mm.
3) The phase change material used is n-eicosane with a melting temperature of 36.5 C
4) A Perspex sheet with an overall dimension of 80 62 mm2 with a thickness of 5 mm is kept at the
top of the heat sink.
5) The sheet is attached to the heat sink using six bolts, each with a diameter of 4 mm. In the 2 mm
recess provided at the heat sink base, a plate heater with an overall dimension of 60 42 mm2
with 2 mm thickness is used to mimic the heat generation in electronic chips.
6) A total of 11 chromel-alumel K-type calibrated thermocouples are used to measure the
temperature at various locations of the heat sink and these thermocouples are fixed in position
using araldite epoxy.
7) A tracking mechanism is designed and fabricated, in order to study the effect of orientation on
heat transfer performance.
8) The tracking mechanism is made of aluminium. Four rubber mountings are used at the base for
better stability and also to make the levelling easy. The levelling is aided by the use of a spirit
level.
9) experiments were carried out for different orientations (0, 25, 45, 60, 75, 90, 110, 130, 150, 180
and 210) of the heat sink at a power level of 5 W
Local Thermal Non equilibrium During Melting of a Paraffin Filled in an Open-Cell Copper Foam: A
Visualized Study at the Pore-Scale

1) Melting experiments in a rectangular cell were performed with paraffin/copper foam composite
samples having a single pore size of 15 ppi.
2) The melting experiments were carried out in a rectangular drawer-type container having internal
dimensions of 261410 mm3.
3) The container was made of 2mm thick Plexiglas sheets.
4) There were two types of top plate being utilized for different purposes. As illustrated in Fig. 1(b),
the upper one was a regular piece of cover plate for the validation tests, while the lower one was
drilled to have a small circular window having a diameter of 6mm for pore-scale thermal imaging.
The top plate was able to be mounted and removed by sliding along the internally grooved lateral
walls.
5) Two T-type TCs (Omega TT-T-40), both calibrated to have an accuracy of 0.2C, were placed at
different positions in the test section.
6) TC-1 was used to measure the local temperature at a point on the composite PCM sample surface.
7) With a kit macro lens, the maximum resolution of thermal imaging by this IR camera was 50m,
which was deemed to be sufficient for temperature measurements in the submillimeter pores for
the 15 ppi copper foam adopt.
8) The TCs and IR camera were employed simultaneously to measure the transient temperature
variations during melting. As mentioned, the top plate without a hole (see Fig. 1(b)) was used to
minimize heat losses from the top surface for validation tests. While the temperature
measurement by TC-1 was logged continuously at a frequency of 1 Hz, the top plate was quickly
pulled out and pushed back to allow a very short exposure of the top surface of the composite
PCM sample to the IR camera at every minute.
9) In order to continuously take thermal images on the temperature fields over the top surface
during melting, the top plate with a hole was utilized for regular melting tests.
10) By setting the total emissivity of the paraffin as the measured average value of 0.941, there is a
good agreement between the TC and IR results during the entire course of melting for a single
test, with the overall relative mean deviation being found less than 4% for all the three tests.
11) As required by IR thermal imaging as an input parameter, the total emissivity of the paraffin was
determined experimentally by a surface emissivity apparatus that is based upon the principle of
comparing the steady-state Radiative energy between the paraffin sample surface and an artificial
black body surface that were maintained in thermal equilibrium. The emissivity measurements
were carried out for three individual samples, and each sample was tested for three times. The
total emissivity of the paraffin was found to be 0.9410.009.