Transient thermal analysis of three latent heat storage configurations for rapid thermal charging

A space-based thermal storage application must accept large quantities of heat in a short period of time at an elevated temper ature. An approximate model of a lithium hydride phase change energy storage system was used to estimate reasonable physical dimensions for this application which included the use of a liquid metal heat transfer fluid. A finite difference computer code was developed and used to evaluate three methods of enhancing heat transfer in the PCM energy storage system. None of these three methods, inserting thin fins, reticulated nickel, or liquid lithium, improved the system performance by a significantly large amount. The use of a 95% void fraction reticulated nickel insert was found to increase the storage capacity of the system slightly with a small decrease in the system energy density. The addition of 10% liquid lithium was found to cause minor increases in both storage density and storage capacity with the added benefit of reducing the hydrogen pressure of the lithium hydride.