AbstractThe thermal behaviour of a packed bed storage system charged with hot air is modelled using two partial differential equations representing the energy conservation in the air and solid phases constituting the bed. These two equations are coupled through the heat exchange process between the two phases.A fully implicit numerical scheme based on forward, upwind and central differencing for the time, first and second space derivatives, respectively, is used to solve the modelling equations. Marching technique is used for the air equation and a tri‐diagonal matrix solver is employed to solve the solid equation. The solution yields the thermal structure of the bed, namely the air and solid temperature distribution inside the bed at any particular time, and the variation of total energy stored in the bed with time. The effect of bed length, solid diameter and void fraction on the thermal characteristics of the packed bed is studied. Further, the performance of the bed under variable inlet air temperature and mass flow rate is investigate