In this study, a radially magnetized cylindrical magnet has been used to reduce the required time for full charging (melting) and discharging (solidification) processes in a shell-and-tube latent heat thermal energy storage (LHTES) system. A transient three-dimensional CFD simulation is employed to explore the effects of different magnetic field intensities and different inlet heat transfer fluid (HTF) temperatures on the charging and discharging performances using control volume technique. Besides, the enthalpy-porosity has been used to model the PCM solidification/melting process. The used nanoparticle enhanced phase change material (NEPCM) consists of a PCM (RT50) as the base material and Fe3O4 nano-particles. The results show that the required time for the full solidification and melting processes decreases by applying the magnetic field (MF). Besides, shorter charging and discharging times are the results of increasing the strength of the MF. For instance, the reduction of the melting time and solidification time by applying MF with the intensity of Mn=1018e6 are 63.44% and 21.67% respectively.
