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An energy storage system has been designed to study the thermal characteristics of paraffin wax with an embedded nano size copper oxide (CuO) particle. This paper presents studies conducted on phase transition times, heat fraction as well as heat transfer characteristics of paraffin wax as phase change material (PCM) embedded with CuO nanoparticles. 40 nm mean size CuO particles of 2, 5 and 10% by weight were dispersed in PCM for this study. Experiments were performed on a heat exchanger with 1.5-10 l/min of heat transfer fluid (HTF) flow. Time-based variations of the temperature distributions are revealed from the results of observations of melting and solidification curves. The results strongly suggested that the thermal conductivity enhances 6, 6.7 and 7.8% in liquid state and in dynamic viscosity it enhances by 5, 14 and 30% with increasing mass fraction of the CNEPs. The thermal conductivity ratio of the composites can be augmented by a factor up to 1.3. The heat transfer coefficient during solidification increased about 78% for the maximum flow rate. The analysis of experimental results reveals that the addition of copper oxide nanoparticles to the paraffin wax enhances both the conduction and natural convection very effectively in composites and in paraffin wax. The paraffin wax-based composites have great potential for energy storage applications like industrial waste heat recovery, solar thermal applications and solar based dynamic space power generation with optimal fraction of copper oxide nanoparticles.

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