HEAT TRANSFER OF LATENT THERMAL ENERGY STORAGE CAPSULES ARRANGED IN ALIGNMENT WITH FLUID FLOW - (1ST REPORT, EXPERIMENTS ON HEAT TRANSFER CHARACTERISTICS).

Experiments were performed to obtain data for the heat transfer characteristics of latent thermal energy storage capsules. The arrangement of the capsules was in alignment with the flow direction. During the melting of the phase change material (n-Octadecane), there is less difference in the phase change rate of each capsule than for the solidification case because of the effect of natural convection in the liquid phase on heat transfer. It was also shown that the non-dimensional time required to complete the solidification of each capsule can be arranged without distinction of the rows in the flow direction.