Energy Conversion and Management 50 (2009) 360364

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Energy Conversion and Management

journal homepage: www.elsevier.com/locate/enconman

A solidication process with free convection of water in an elliptical enclosure

Esam M. Alawadhi *
Kuwait University, College of Engineering and Petroleum, Mechanical Engineering Department, P.O. Box # 5969 Safat, 13060, Kuwait

a r t i c l e i n f o a b s t r a c t

Article history: The solidication process of water inside an elliptical enclosure is investigated using the nite element
Received 27 June 2007 method based on a xed grid scheme. The latent heat effect is simulated using the apparent capacity
Received in revised form 13 February 2008 method, and the natural convection ow of water during the solidication is considered. Calculations
Accepted 12 September 2008
are made for the rate of change of average water temperature and required time for solidication to com-
Available online 26 October 2008
plete for difference initial temperatures of water, ellipses aspect ratios, and inclinations of the ellipse.
The results indicate that solidication time is considerably decreased with increasing the aspect ratio
Keywords:
of the ellipse, but the inclination has a negligible effect on the solidication process. High resolution cap-
Solidication process
Natural convection
turing of the solid/liquid moving interface and the details of temperature contours and ow eld evalu-
Elliptical enclosure ations are presented.
2008 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

1. Introduction
In resent years, latent heat energy storage devices have gained
signicance for many engineering applications when there is a
large amount of energy to be stored, such as solar energy storage
and refrigeration systems. These devices utilize phase change
materials (PCM), such as parafn, salt, and water, to store energy.
PCMs possess unique features that make them widely utilized in
energy systems. They have large thermal capacity, and come with
a wide range of melting temperatures. Additionally, they are inex-
pensive and chemically inactive. Water is commonly used in refrig-
eration systems, while parafn and salt are used in solar systems.
In the latent heat devices, the PCM is stored in enclosures that
could be rectangular, circular, elliptical, or hexagonal. Therefore,
studying the phase change process inside an enclosure is essential
to predict the thermal performance of the latent heat energy
devices.
The phase change process inside a circular enclosure receives a
great attention in the past decade due to frequent appearance in
energy systems. Analytical solutions of melting or solidication
process inside enclosures were accomplished. In the earlier studies
[1], the conduction mode of heat transfer was only considered to
avoid the complexity of modeling uid ow. The natural convec-
tion effect of liquid PCM was considered later [2] by imposing con-
vection boundary condition at the solid/liquid interface, and the
solid core was xed at the center of the enclosure to prevent the
solid PCM portion from sinking to the bottom. An analytical solu-
tion of melting process with experimental validation was pre-
sented by Bareiss and Beer [3], and melting process in the
* Fax: +965 4847131.
E-mail address: esam@kuc01.kuniv.edu.kw
contact zone was done by Prasad and Sengupta [4]. Nicholas and
Bayazitoglu [5] developed a mathematical model for melting pro-
cess inside a circular enclosure to study the effect of the unequal
densities on the shape and location of the solidliquid interface.
Gilpin [6] experimentally studied the formation of dendritic ice
in a circular pipe for different cooling rates. Freezing phenomena
in ice-water systems in a pipe was presented by Akyurt et al. [7]
to review the characteristics of solidication and melting pro-
cesses. In addition to the analytical and experimental studies, a
numerical analysis was accomplished by Alawadhi [8] of solidica-
tion process inside a circular enclosure using nite element meth-
od. The effect of natural convection ow on the solidication rate
was presented. The results indicated that the convection mode of
heat transfer was dominant over conduction if the Rayleigh num-
ber is higher than 5  106 .
In order to control the phase change process inside a circular
enclosure, mathematical models of phase change inside a horizon-
tal elliptical cylinder were developed by several researchers. Chen
et al. [9] presented an approximate analytical solution of a contact
melting of PCM inside a horizontal elliptical tube using assump-
tions similar to these of lubrication and lm condensation. Another
mathematical model was described by Fomin et al. [10] indicated
that the melting inside a circular enclosure requires a longer melt-
ing time than an elliptical one. In these studies, the solidication
process was not studied theoretically, and the effect of the natural
convection ow during the phase change was not considered. In
addition, water was not examined as a working uid in the previ-
ous studies. Therefore, the present study solves the solidication
process of water inside a horizontal elliptical enclosure. Using
water adds additional complexity to the analysis. Density inversion
phenomenon near 4 C reverses the direction of the natural con-
vection ow which makes the numerical solution highly unstable,

0196-8904/$ - see front matter 2008 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.
doi:10.1016/j.enconman.2008.09.015
 E.M. Alawadhi / Energy Conversion and Management 50 (2009) 360364 361

Nomenclature

a, b horizontal and vertical semi-axes of the ellipse a thermal diffusivity (m2/s)

Cp specic heat (kJ/kg K) b thermal expansion coefcient (1/K)
C p apparent specic heat (kJ/kg K) dhL latent heat (kJ/kg)
g gravity acceleration (m/s2) dT phase change transition temperature (K)
k thermal conductivity (W/m K) h dimensionless temperature
P, P dimensional and dimensionless pressures (N/m2) l viscosity (Pa s)
PCM phase change material q density (kg/m3)
Pr Prandtl number s dimensionless time
q constant in Gebhart and Mollendorf Eq. (6) m kinematics viscosity (m2/s)
R equivalent radius of the ellipse (m) x constant in Gebhart and Mollendorf Eq. (6)
r radius (m)
Ra Rayleigh number Subscripts
T temperature (K) i initial condition
t time (s) max maximum
Ste Stefan number s solidication
U, V dimensionless x- and y-direction velocity components w wall
u, v x- and y-direction velocity components (m/s)
X, Y dimensionless x- and y-coordinate Superscript
x, y x- and y-coordinate (m) n iteration number

Greek symbols
P general eld variable
/ inclination of the ellipse (degree)

and this phenomenon was previously addressed [11]. A parametric the boundary temperature is decreased to Tw, which is below the
study was performed in order to assess the effect of design param- solidication temperature of water, to initialize the solidication
eters on the solidication process. The examined parameters are: process. Calculations are performed for Ti = 4, 8, and 16 C. For
waters initial temperature, ellipses aspect ratio, and the inclina- Ti = 4 C, the density of water increases with temperature between
tion of the ellipse. 0 C and 4 C. For Ti = 8 and 16 C, the uid ow patterns become
more complicated because the maximum water density is located
2. Analysis between the waters initial temperature and the boundary temper-
ature. The coupled uid-heat transfer problem was solved using
Fig. 1 depicts the geometry conguration considered in this the following assumptions:
study. The geometry consists of a horizontal elliptical enclosure
with long and short semi-axes, a and b, with an inclination angle, a. The problem is two-dimensional.
u. The equation x=a2 y=b2 1 describes the surface curve of b. The natural convection ow is laminar.
the ellipse. The ellipse aspect ratio is dened as: n b=a. Five as- c. The thermal expansion is not considered.
pect ratios are examined, n 1; 2; 3; 4, and 5. The n = 1 is for a cir- d. Viscous dissipation and radiation effects are neglected.
cular enclosure case, while n > 1 is for the elliptical enclosure cases.
In order to maintain the quantity of water in the all cases, the Generally, the solidication process with natural convection
enclosures cross section area, A pr2 pab, are equal. The water ow is two modes of heat transfer problem, conduction in the solid
is initially in liquid phase at a uniform temperature (Ti). At time >0, portion and convection in liquid portion. The commonly used ap-
proach is the xed grid method. In this method, the latent heat ef-
fect is accounted in the governing equations by making the specic
heat function of temperature [12]. The apparent heat capacity is
y the sum of the sensible and latent heats, as follows:
dhL
C p C p 1
dT
b where dhL =dT is equal to zero at the solid and liquid phases. The fol-
a lowing is the denition of the apparent heat capacity used to simu-
late the latent heat effect:
x 8
< Cp
> T 6 Ts

C p C p dh L
T s < T < T s dT 2
>
:
dT
Cp T P T s dT
where Ts is the solidication temperature of water, and dT is the
phase change transition temperature, which is in order of 1 C
[13]. By considering the solid as a liquid with nite viscosity, the so-
lid and liquid are formulated as a one domain problem using the
same governing equations [14]. Using this technique, solid/liquid
Fig. 1. Schematics of the solidication problem in an elliptical enclosure. interface can be tracked. To describe the increase of the viscosity
362 E.M. Alawadhi / Energy Conversion and Management 50 (2009) 360364

during the phase change, the following viscosity function is used in The dimensionless initial and boundary conditions are as
the momentum equation: follows:
( s 0: U V 0, and h hi
l T P Ts
s > 0: at the enclosures boundary, U V 0, and h hw
lT 3
105 T < Ts

The two basic dimensionless parameters describing the problem are 3. Finite element method
the Prandtl (Pr), and Stefan (Ste) numbers, and they are dened as,
respectively: The governing equations are solved numerically using the nite
element method. Linear quadrilateral element was used to discri-
m tize the computational domain. The computational mesh is shown
Pr 4a
a in Fig. 2. The nite element model consists of 16,523 element. The
C p dT precondition generalized minimum residual (PGMR) solver is em-
Ste 4b
dhL ployed to solve a set of descritization equations of energy, while
To reduce the number of parameters for the numerical solution, Tri-Diagonal Matrix Algorithm (TDMA) solver is used to solve the
dimensionless variables are introduced for space, velocity, pressure, velocity elds and pressure. Determining the acceptable mesh den-
temperature, and time as follows: sity is of prime importance. The accuracy of the results can further
be improved with a higher number of elements. However, the
x
X 5a number of elements must be balanced against the required compu-
R
y tational time. To ensure that the solution is independent of the
Y 5b mesh, the results from this model are compared with results from
R
u models with higher number of elements. The number of elements
U 5c of the original model is increased by 10%, 20% and 30%. The results
a=R
m of these models are compared to the original model, and the differ-
V 5d ence between the models was under 3%. Therefore, the 16,523 ele-
a=R
ments model was adopted for the numerical predictions. All eld
 P
P 5e variables are converged, and the following condition is used to de-
Prqa2 =R2 clare convergence:
T  Tw
h 5f
jT s  T w j
t
s 2 5g
R =m
p
R is the equivalent radius of the ellipse, R ab. The relationship
between density of water and temperature is non-linear. Therefore,
the commonly used Boussinesq approximation cannot be imple-
mented because it is only valid for uid having a linear density
temperature relationship. A technique proposed by Gebhart and
Mollendorf [15] is used, and the following density-temperature
relationship was adopted:
q qmax 1  xjT  T max jq 6
3 6 q
where qmax 999:972 kg/m , x 9:297373  10 C , Tmax =
4.0293 C, and q 1:894816. The modied Rayleigh number, Ra,
is dened as
Fig. 2. Two dimensional nite element mesh for the computational domain.
q g xR3 T s  T w q
Ra max 7
qRm
The conservation equations in dimensionless form for mass, 25

momentums and energy are as follows, respectively:

20 Top-Num.
Top-Exp.
oU oV Left-Num.
0 8a Left-Exp.
oX oY " # 15
Bottom-Num.
Bottom-Exp.
(

 o2 U o2 U
Temperature ( C

oU 1 oU oU oP
o

U V  Pr 8b
os Pr oX oY oX oX 2 oY 2 10
" #
oV 1 oV oV oP o2 V o2 V
U V  Pr 5
os Pr oX oY oY oX 2 oY 2
Rajh  hs jq  j1  hs jq 8c 0

oh oh oh o2 h o2 h
UStePr U V 8d -5
os oX oY oX 2 oY 2
where -10
8 0 1000 2000 3000 4000 5000
<1
> h60 Time(sec.)
1
USte 1 Ste 0 < h 6 1:05 9
>
: Fig. 3. Temperature history of water at the top, and bottom sides of the enclosure of
1 h P 1:05 the current numerical results and Chen and Lee results [16].
 E.M. Alawadhi / Energy Conversion and Management 50 (2009) 360364 363

" n1 #
P n
published experimental results. Chen and Lee [16] performed an
 i;j  Pi;j  5
max   6 1  10 10 experimental investigation to study water solidication process in
 Pn1i;j

a circular horizontal cylinder. The diameter of the cylinder was
where P is any degree of freedom of a general eld variable. The 82.8 mm with a thickness of 2.5 mm, and a length of 147 mm.
convergence monitor represents the sum of the changes of a vari- The initial temperature of the water was 21 C. At time >0, the cyl-
able calculated from the results between the current (n + 1)th iter- inders outer surface temperature was dropped to 10.5 C. Ther-
ation and previous (n)th iteration divided by the sum of the current mocouples were used to obtain the history of the waters
values.The results of the proposed model are compared with temperature, and they are placed at the top, the bottom, and left
sides. Waters temperature history of the present numerical model
is compared with results of Chen and Lee in Fig. 3. As shown, a good
agreement is obtained.
a
4. Results and discussion
4.85
4.67 Fig. 4 shows temperature contours and ow eld evaluations
4.35
4.04
for the solidication process at six time steps, s = 0.05, 0.1, 0.25,
3.42 0.5, 0.75, and 1.0. The initial dimensionless water temperature is
2.80
2.18
1.56 hi = 5, and the ellipse aspect ratio is n = 3 with / = 0. The density
of water increases from its initial temperature to reach the density
peak temperature at h = 3, and then, the density decreases and re-
b
vises the direction of the natural convection ow until the water is
completely solidied. The waters temperature is initially higher
4.24
than the density peak temperature, as shown in Fig. 4a. During this
3.9
5 stage, the density decreases with temperature in the entire do-
3.67
main, creating one clockwise direction recirculating cell. At
3.11
2.54 s = 0.1, Fig. 4b indicates that the temperature at the lower region
1.98
1.41 decreased below the density peak temperature. Hence, water den-
sity increases with the temperature, forming a new clockwise
c direction recirculating cell. At this time, the ow structure shows
two recirculating cells, a left counter clockwise direction cell, and
a right clockwise direction cell. As time progresses, s = 0.25,
waters temperature decreases further, causing the left cell to ex-
pand more and completely occupy the domain. From s = 0.25 to
1.0, the waters temperature is below the density peak temperature
2.82
2.44
2.07
and a counter clockwise recirculating cell occupies the domain. In
1.69
1.13 addition, Fig. 4 shows the progress of the ice layer formation at the
inner surface of the enclosure.
d Fig. 5 shows the effect of the ellipse aspect ratio on the waters
average temperature for hi = 5 and / = 0. Fig. 5 indicates that
increasing the aspect ratio has a positive effect on the cooling rate
of water. As the aspect ratio increases, the circumference of the
enclosure increases, enhancing heat removal from the water.
1.91
1.78
1.66
1.53
1.27
0.64 5

e 4.5
b/a=1
b/a=2
b/a=3
b/a=4
4
b/a=5

3.5
1.65
1.59
1.53
ave

1.48 3
1.27
0.74

2.5
f
2

1.5

1.54
1.52 1
1.50
1.27
0.59 0 0.5 1 1.5

Fig. 4. Flow eld and temperature contours of the solidication process for hi = 5,
n = 3, and / = 0, at: (a) s = 0.05, (b) s = 0.1, (c) s = 0.25, (d) s = 0.5, (e) s = 0.75, (f) Fig. 5. The effect on the ellipses aspect ratio on the average temperature of the
s = 1.0. water during solidication process, for hi = 5 and / = 0.
364 E.M. Alawadhi / Energy Conversion and Management 50 (2009) 360364

1.75 hi = 5, n = 3, and / = 0, 45, and 90. The results indicate that the
inclination of the ellipse has a negligible effect on the thermal
i = 3 characteristics of the solidication process. However, pervious re-
i = 5
1.5
i = 9 search of melting process accomplished by Fomin et al. [10] indi-
cated that the elongated ellipse, / = 0, has a higher melting rate
than for oblate one, / = 90. This contradict is due to the molten
SolidificationTime

1.25 layer thickness, which is thinner for elongated enclosure than for
oblate one, exerts pressure on the solid portion [10]. This mecha-
nism makes the melting rate for elongated ellipse higher than for
1
oblate one, and this phenomenon does not exist in the present
solidication process.
0.75
5. Conclusion

0.5 Some results of a solidication process of water inside a hori-

zontal elliptical enclosure with variable aspect ratios and inclina-
tions are presented. The latent heat effect is simulated using the
0.25 apparent capacity method. The natural convection ow of water
1 2 3 4 5
n during the solidication process is considered, and the non-linear
relationship between waters density and temperature creates a
Fig. 6. Solidication time for water for different waters initial temperature and unique ow pattern of the natural convection ow. The results
ellipses aspect ratio, with / = 0.
indicate that solidication time is signicantly decreased with
increasing the aspect ratio of the ellipse. The solidication time
can be reduced by 50% if an elliptical enclosure used with n = 4
5 over a circular one. On the other hand, the inclination of the ellipse
= 0o
has a negligible effect on the solidication process.
4.5 = 45 o
= 90 o
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Fig. 7. The effect on the ellipses inclination on the average temperature of the
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