Numerical simulation of thermal properties of cubic period metal foam embedded graphene-aerogel composite PCM

In the context of green and clean energy, latent heat energy storage by phase change materials is considered as one of the important energy technologies. In this paper, a new metal foam embedded graphene aerogel composite phase change material is developed, and pore-scale numerical simulations are performed in order to investigate the thermal properties of this composite phase change material. Among them, this paper designs copper foam with cubic periodic unit structure, which not only has high thermal conductivity, high porous structure and low relative density, but also can be rapidly fabricated by new fabrication techniques, while paraffin and erythritol are selected as PCM embedded in the metal foam. By analyzing the temperature-time and liquid phase-time relationship graphs, it is known that the new composite phase change material has more uniform internal temperature distribution and shorter melt condensation time compared to graphene-aerogel composite PCM, which provides a method for thermal management of PCMs.