Study on the application of latent heat cold storage in a refrigerated warehouse

Abstract

Integrating latent heat cold storage (LHCS) system with refrigerated warehouses benefits both energy and operation cost savings, especially under a peak-valley price mechanism. This paper presented a feasible scheme with an operation strategy. Besides, a detailed three-dimensional CFD model was developed in ANSYS to test the temperature distribution in the refrigerated warehouse with phase change material (PCM) plates in order to validate the feasibility of the system. In addition, an economic analysis was also carried out to calculate the operation benefit and the payback period of the new scheme.