Phase change processes in latent heat thermal energy storage (LHTES) units are relevant, due to their ability in storing surplus power generated from renewable and conventional power plants. Macroencapsulation of phase change material (PCM) is one of several approaches to increase the mean discharging and charging power of such storage units. Numerical modelling and simulation in this context is a necessary alternative to rapid-prototyping to study solid-liquid phase change in latent heat thermal energy storage units. In this work, a numerical model is developed to represent the detailed thermal coupling between the heat transfer fluid (HTF) and phase change material capsules in a storage unit. An optimized iterative approach to represent the non-linear enthalpy-temperature and variable viscosity method for fixing and settling of solid phase in the capsule are employed in this work. Different computational domains for phase change material (PCM), heat transfer fluid (HTF) and capsule wall are employed, whose conjugated heat transfer is modelled in this work. A small representative latent heat thermal energy storage container is conceptualized to validate the developed conjugated heat transfer model. The melt front of phase change material is captured using photographic measurement in experiments over the complete melting time. The developed computational fluid dynamics (CFD) based conjugated heat transfer model has shown a very good agreement with experiments to estimate the heat transfer and melting of phase change material in the cylindrical capsule of a small scale latent heat thermal energy storage unit.

潜热热能存储（LHTES）单元中的相变过程非常重要，因为它们具有存储可再生和常规电厂产生的剩余电力的能力。相变材料（PCM）的宏观封装是增加这种存储单元的平均放电和充电功率的几种方法之一。在这种情况下，数值模型和仿真是快速原型研究潜热热能存储单元中固液相变的必要替代方法。在这项工作中，开发了一个数值模型来表示存储单元中传热流体（HTF）与相变材料胶囊之间的详细热耦合。在这项工作中，采用了一种优化的迭代方法来表示用于固定和沉降胶囊中的非线性焓-温度和可变粘度方法。使用相变材料（PCM），传热流体（HTF）和胶囊壁的不同计算域，在此工作中对它们的共轭传热进行了建模。一个小型的代表性潜热热能存储容器被概念化以验证开发的共轭传热模型。在整个熔化时间内，通过照相测量在实验中捕获相变材料的熔化前沿。