Heat transfer enhancement in a thermal storage system consisting of vertically arranged fins between a heated and cooled horizontal finned-tube arrangement is reported. The high thermal expansion coefficient and low viscosity of paraffin wax, at temperatures above 50°C, are utilized to induce natural convection in the liquid phase even at small thicknesses. The experimental data on the rate of production of liquid as a function of time and temperature of the hot surface is presented. The photographs of the melted zone indicate a naturally buoyant flow induced in the neighborhood of the vertical fins causes a rapid melting of the solid wax and a downdraft along the cooler solid phase surface. The heat transfer coefficient at the interface is calculated from experimentally determined instantaneous locations of the moving boundary.

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A simplified analytical model for the computation of thermal conduction across rectangular-celled enclosures based on the assumption of quasi-one-dimensional conduction in the cell partitions is presented. The rectangular enclosures may contain solid or liquid for which the conduction is two or three-dimensional depending on the geometrical configuration. Additional assumptions concerning radiation interchange between participating surfaces are necessary when the enclosure contains a stagnant gas. This analytical model leads to a closed form solution for temperature distribution in the partitions and the multidimensional conductive region. A parametric study of heat flux is presented. The numerical data define a range of parameters for which a one-dimensional conduction model is satisfactory.