Experimental Study of Solidification at Extreme Low Temperature in a Cylindrical Container

Abstract

The objective of the present paper is to provide the experimental data for the study of solidification of phase change material (PCM) in the cylindrical container. The pure water was considered as a PCM, copper was chosen for the cylindrical container and the liquid nitrogen was taken as the cooling fluid. The experiments were done for different sizes of cylindrical cavities, whose dimensions were 20×20, 20×30, 30×30, 30×40 and 40 × 40 (diameter in mm× height in mm). The PCM was taken initially at room temperature for all the cavities. The temperature variation is presented at different time steps during the solidification of PCM. The result shows that the convection from the atmosphere has a significant effect on upper surface. As the diameter of the cavity changes, for the same height, then notable change in solidification time is observed while as the height is changed, for the same internal diameter, the change in solidification time is observed to be less significant.