An Experimental Investigation on the Performance of a Water Storage Tank with Sodium Acetate Trihydrate.

Phase change material (PCM) water tanks have a major influence on the efficiency improvement of solar energy systems. This article discusses the effects of PCM under various inlets in a tank based on related research. So as to research the performance of the water storage tank, this paper built a set of water tank experimental systems using sodium acetate trihydrate. The thermal characteristics of two different water tanks were analyzed at 2, 6 and 10 L/min when the inlet temperature was 20 °C and the initial high temperature was 80 °C. The test results indicate that adding PCMs helps to provide an extra 1.4% of stored heat, prolong the hot water outlet time, and has a better thermal stratification, compared with ordinary water tanks. However, PCMs do not give off heat quickly at high flow rates. Besides the exergy efficiency (EE) gradually decreasing, the MIX number first decreases and then increases; the fill efficiency (FE) has the opposite trend with the flow increasing. FE has a max of 0.905 at 6 L/min. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]