No abstract

The paper analyzes the possibility of providing heating and hot water for residential buildings using a thermal accumulator that converts solar energy. The accumulator uses the latent thermal energy storage. The phase change material is paraffin wax. The heat transfer inside the thermal accumulator was modeled using Fluent module from Ansys 14.5. The mathematical formulation of the CFD analyses followed the phase change of the wax, the heat transfer inside the accumulator and also the turbulence that occurs in the water pipe. The analysis was done in transient regime to observe the latent heat transfer that goes from the molten paraffin wax to the flowing water.