Sensitivity Analysis of Packed Bed Phase Change Material Thermal Storage for Domestic Solar Thermal System

Increase in solar fraction has been noted as one of the main goals for wider application of domestic solar thermal systems. To increase solar fraction, higher energy density thermal storage availability is a key point. In this paper phase change materials have been analysed as part of a domestic solar thermal system. Sensitivity analysis of annual simulation in TRNSYS with climate data of Riga, Latvia is used. The paper also explores better methods for evaluating phase change material (PCM) performance based on temperature measurements in PCM. The results showed that the melting point of PCM and temperature set point of an auxiliary heater have the highest sensitivity of aspects analysed in the paper. It also reports that the coefficient of variation of energy in PCM correlates well with solar fraction and can be used as a parameter to evaluate PCM’s suitability for certain applications.