To address the critical issue of low cold storage rate of phase-change materials in commercial phase-change modules, this study designed and constructed four heat-conducting-fin-enhanced cold storage blocks featuring different heat-conducting fin configurations: semi-equilateral triangles, semi-squares, semi-regular pentagons, and semi-circles. It systematically investigates the influence of the fin shape and thickness parameters of heat-conducting fins on the cooling charging process of cold storage blocks and clarifies the correlation between heat transfer enhancement and the cooling storage and release performance of refrigerators. The results show that laying copper high-thermal-conductivity fins on the surface of cold storage blocks can significantly accelerate the phase change cold storage rate. Among these structures, the semi-square fin configuration exhibits the optimal enhancement effect: compared with the baseline model without fins, its solidification time is shortened by 35 min. The results indicate that with the increase in fin thickness, the cooling charging time decreases continuously, and there exists a nonlinear positive correlation between cooling charging efficiency and fin thickness. Specifically, the cooling charging time reaches the minimum value when the fin thickness increases to 2.5 mm, while the rate of reduction in cooling charging time slows down significantly after the thickness exceeds 1.5 mm. In addition, the phase-change cold storage block can notably prolong the cooling release duration of the refrigerator. However, although the introduction of heat-conducting fins can improve the cooling charging rate, it will shorten the continuous cooling release time, thus presenting a trade-off between cooling charging efficiency and cooling release duration. The conclusions of this study provide theoretical support and practical guidance for the structural design and performance optimization of efficient commercial phase-change thermal storage and release systems.
Guo et al. (Mon,) studied this question.