Numerical investigation of melting and solidification process of phase change materials

Nowadays consumption of fossil fuel causes important environmental problems. In addition, because of fossil fuel is not renewable energy source, researchers have been in guest of alternative energy sources.In this study, to increase the heat transfer of PCM? s, different numbers of fins in a vertical model have been examined effect on melting/solidification processes of PCM. Results were obtained as 2 dimensional. The aim of this study to examined the process of melting/solidification in different models and to observe the effects of different model on melting/solidification process. The fins which are placed on the model aimed to increase of heat transfer in case of low heat conductivity FDM? s. For this purpose models which were examined were determined as; fin-free, 5 and 10 fins models.In study, ANSYS-Fluent commercial software is code of Computational Fluid Dynamics (CFD) was used. In conclusion, it was determined that according to data was observed the numbers of fins have a dramatical effects on melting/solidification process of PCM. It was show that the 10-fin model is most effective one among the others was used.Key words: Phase Change Material, Melting and Solidification, Computational Fluid Dynamics, FLUENT, Fin.