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Phase Change Material (PCM) storage in EnergyPlus

asked 2019-10-16 15:24:53 -0600

Hi,

I know EnergyPlus already contains ice storage and cold water storage tank. In my research, I need to study and test phase change material like paraffin waxes or bioPCMs. Is there any way to change ice storage tank properties in order to change its behavior to the PCM storage tank? if not, I would appreciate any help!

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Professor Weihuan Zhao recently presented her research on polyurethane-PCM at 2019 Performance Huddle (Houston chapter of IBPSA-USA). They shared the 'effective Rvalue' of a PCM wall based on correlation between experimental-data and conduction transfer functions in Energy Plus. If you are interested, please reach out to her: weihuan.zhao@unt.eduhttps://facultyinfo.unt.edu/faculty-p...

Kapil's avatar Kapil  ( 2019-10-21 14:15:18 -0600 )edit

thank you. You're mentioning a case with passive storage. I don't know how it can be related to my case?

Mehrdad Vojdani's avatar Mehrdad Vojdani  ( 2019-11-12 17:22:07 -0600 )edit

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answered 2019-10-18 10:25:25 -0600

Using ThermalStorage:Ice:Detailed it should be possible to model other storage media by changing the value of Freezing Temperature of Storage Medium and changing the charging and discharging curves.

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Thank you very much. Another choice for me is to model my PCM tank separately in Matlab and couple it to Energyplus with BCTVB. Since I want to conduct a whole year energy analysis studying the effect of PCM storage for peak shifting, Which one do you think is more acceptable?

Mehrdad Vojdani's avatar Mehrdad Vojdani  ( 2019-11-12 17:21:04 -0600 )edit

Using Matlab gives you more control over the tank model, but the trick will be finding existing EMS actuators to make the connection into the EnergyPlus model. Since there are no EMS actuators for the ice storage model, two options for linking the custom tank model are LoadProfile:Plant (which has actuators for mass flow rate and power +/-) or PlantComponent:UserDefined (see example file EMSUserDefined5ZoneAirCooled.idf).

MJWitte's avatar MJWitte  ( 2019-11-15 12:00:12 -0600 )edit

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Asked: 2019-10-16 15:24:53 -0600

Seen: 1,162 times

Last updated: Oct 18 '19