Paper Title
Performance of a Packed Bed Solar Energy Storage System Having Rectangular Elements as Storage Material

Abstract
A storage system constitutes an important component of the solar energy utilization system. Packed bed generally represents the most suitable energy storage unit for air based solar energy systems. A packed bed is a volume of porous media obtained by packing particles of selected material into a container. An experimental study on a packed bed solar energy storage system has been conducted and reported in this paper. Packing of small sized particles requires a large pressure drop for uniform flow of hot air through the bed, which causes a large amount of energy consumption to propel hot air through the bed. Four different types of rectangular concrete elements of relatively large size have been used as the storage material in order to reduce the energy consumption. The storage elements are arranged differently and uniformly to obtain four void fraction values and the range of Reynolds number is taken from 500 to 866.The effect of system and operating parameters on the heat transfer and pressure drop characteristics has been investigated.