Thermal Performance Review of Solar Water Heaters Units Containing Phase Change Materials
Author(s):
El Houssine Benchara*, Sara Jennah, Naoual Belouaggadia, Khalifa Mansouri, Omar Bouattane
Affiliation(s):
Laboratory of Signals, Distributed systems and Artificial Intelligence (SSDIA), Hassan II University of Casablanca, Higher Normal School of Technical Education Mohammedia, Morocco
Corresponding Author Email: [email protected]
This is an open access article distributed under the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.
The main challenge of actual research is the effective methods for energy storage. One of the best methods to store heat energy from the sun is by making use of phase change material (PCMs), due to a huge ton of captured latent heat and isothermal kind of PCM during heat expansion and dismissal during phase change. In this paper, we propose to investigate the use of PCM technologies for solar energy stora ge. A comprehensive review of the PCMs and the main criteria that govern their selection is presented; and numerous types of PCM materials, their properties and applications in solar energy systems have been reviewed. The results of this survey identify gaps in existing research on latent storage in solar water heaters. The main objective of this work is to offer a perspective on the design of a new type of solar water heaters.