Investigation on heat transfer properties of slurry of stabilized paraffin during a melting process

This paper is presented in the framework of the increasing interest for the use of latent heat transfer slurries for cooling processes. Paraffin serves as a latent heat storage material and a polymer network acts as the supporting material. The phase change material melts around 7 °C with a latent heat of fusion of 115 kJ/kg. A special experimental device is realized which permits the recording of the temperature in a single slurry undergoing a phase change in an agitated bath. Analysis of data permits to develop a phenomenological correlation adapted to the millimetric dimension of the slurry, leading to an estimation of the melting phase change time duration of a particle as a function of the main parameters of the problem.