Direct contact melting of porous material

The direct contact melting of a porous material is investigated experimentally and analytically. The phase change material (PCM) is made of fine ice particles of a nearly uniform diameter, which is changed as a parameter. In the analysis, two models are proposed. One is calculated as the direct contact melting of a monolithic sample and another is treated as an assembly of the direct contact melting of the individual particles. As a result, it was found that the heat flux increased with the diameter, due to increase of permeability in a case of small diameter. But, in a case of large diameter, the heat flux decreased as the particle diameter increased because the direct contact melting occurred independently for the individual particles.