Numerical investigation of radiation-assisted freezing in nanomaterial-enhanced porous enclosures.

This investigation examines the application of a wavy porous enclosure as an effective approach for improving cold energy storage, which is of significant importance in both industrial and environmental contexts. The thermal behavior of the system is numerically evaluated using Galerkin method to enhance the efficiency of cold energy conservation. The study emphasizes three principal enhancement mechanisms: the incorporation of porous structures, the addition of hybrid nanomaterials, and the inclusion of thermal radiation effects. To simplify the numerical formulation, assumptions such as homogeneous dispersion of hybrid additives and neglecting convective heat transfer are adopted. The results indicate that filling the enclosure with porous media substantially increases freezing rate about 90.52%. The inclusion of hybrid nanomaterials proves particularly beneficial in configurations without porous media, decreasing the solidification duration by nearly 7.79%. Moreover, accounting for radiative heat transfer further accelerates the freezing process, resulting in an overall performance improvement of about 13.85%.