Fully volumetric tracking of melting fronts in phase change materials with computed tomography

Recent advances in laboratory X-ray computed tomography (XCT) enabled short acquisition times on the order of a few minutes, which enable the investigation of dynamic processes in-situ by time-lapse measurements. These advances open new opportunities for revealing information on the solid-liquid phase transformation occurring in phase changes materials (PCMs), which are a promising solution for designing compact latent thermal energy storage systems (LTES). In this contribution we report results obtained from the XCT System, “LuCi”, recently installed at Lucerne university of Applied Sciences and Arts, where the evolution of the melting process in an ice cube confined within a cylindrical, X-ray transparent sample holder is tracked. Our results indicate that even tiny differences of a few percent in the density of the two different phases can be differentiated in XCT measurements. The high-power X-ray source and a fast X-ray detector of LuCi enable the acquisition of a XCT measurement in a short period (< 1 – 6 minutes). By using proper image processing methods, estimates for the volumetric melting rate, the local melting front velocity, and the tree dimensional (3D) shape of the melting front were obtained from the four-dimensional (4D) imaging data. These results will help to build more efficient thermal energy storage systems in the future, which will support the energy turnaround.