Forced convective heat transfer in supercooled phase-change material suspensions with stochastic crystallization

A model has been developed for the simulation of laminar hydrodynamic and heat transfer characteristics in a horizontal circular tube for a suspension flow with micro-size phase-change material (PCM) particles. The energy equation is formulated by taking into consideration the heat absorption (or release) due to the phase-change process. The heat source or heat generation term in the energy equation is derived from solutions for freezing or melting inside the particles. The supercooling breakdown induced by the stochastic character of the crystallization is taken into account in the modeling with nucleation laws. The solutions were compared to experimental results obtained by different authors.