A Numerical Study Concerning Indirect Ice Storage Tanks Performance

Author(s):  
Cleyton S. Stampa ◽  
Angela O. Nieckele

A numerical investigation regarding the charging process behavior occurring in a typical indirect ice storage tank is presented. It consists of analyzing the heat transfer and removal of energy, applicable to storage systems, which are chiller-based. In this sense the secondary coolant circulates through a heat exchanger that is submerged in a tank of water and it is used to freeze (charge) the phase-change material (water), which never leaves the storage tank. The thermal exchange process is investigated in critical regions formed between the heat exchanger wall and the tank wall. The present study simulates such regions through a channel formed by parallel flat plates, one of which is the heat exchanger, and investigates the heat transfer effects considering it in two different positions. In the first one the channel is in the vertical position, while for the second, it is horizontally positioned. Our task is to provide helpful qualitative results for the heat transfer performance of ice storage tanks. The results are analyzed through streamlines and isotherms, for specific instants of time. Further, the heat transfer effectiveness, average heat flux and solid formed at one of the two plates of the channel, are compared for the vertical and horizontal positions of the channel, as well as different distances from the heat exchanger and tank wall.

2006 ◽  
Vol 5 (1) ◽  
pp. 84
Author(s):  
C. S. Stampa ◽  
A. O. Nieckele

A numerical investigation regarding the charging process behavior occurring in a typical indirect ice storage tank is presented. It consists of analyzing the heat transfer and removal of energy, applicable to storage systems, which are chiller-based. In this sense the secondary coolant circulates through a heat exchanger that is submerged in a tank of water and it is used to freeze (charge) the phase-change material (water), which never leaves the storage tank. The thermal exchange process is investigated considering the storage tank in two different positions. In the first one the storage tank is in the vertical position, while for the second, it is horizontally positioned. The storage tank is represented by a channel formed by parallel flat plates, one of which is the heat exchanger. Our task is to provide helpful qualitative results for the heat transfer performance of ice storage tanks. The results are analysed through streamlines and isotherms, for specific instants of time. Further, the heat transfer effectiveness, average heat flux and solid formed at one of the two plates of the channel, are compared for the vertical and horizontal positions of the channel.


2006 ◽  
Author(s):  
Cleyton S. Stampa ◽  
Angela O. Nieckele

The present paper deals with typical chiller-based ice storage tanks. Natural convection of water (Phase Change Material-PCM) near its density maximum leads to a peculiar nature of the flow pattern in the liquid phase of the PCM, giving rise to a multi-cellular regime that affects drastically the heat transfers within the tank. So, this work intends to examine numerically how the flow pattern affects qualitatively the performance of such thermal storage devices. This is done by investigating the influence of the non-dimensional parameter Grashof number during the charging operation step of such devices that corresponds to the ice making process occurring within the storage tank. Besides, the tank is assumed to be vertically positioned, as well as their internal tubes through which the secondary fluid flows. In order to analyze the heat transfer between the PCM and one internal tube during the growth of an ice layer around it, one selected a vertical annulus as the physical model. The inner vertical wall represents one of the tubes packed into a typical storage tank, while the outer vertical wall represents the thickness of formed ice around the tube. Regarding the annulus, the top and bottom walls, as well as the outer vertical wall were considered thermally insulated. The thermal analysis is focused in the heat transfer at the inner wall for different values of Grashof, keeping unchanged all other parameters that govern the natural convection problem with phase change. An overview of the cooling process is analyzed through streamlines and isotherms, for specific instants of the physical process. Further, a heat transfer analysis for the total charging stage is presented.


2014 ◽  
Vol 1008-1009 ◽  
pp. 850-860 ◽  
Author(s):  
Zhou Wei Zhang ◽  
Jia Xing Xue ◽  
Ya Hong Wang

A calculation method for counter-current type coil-wound heat exchanger is presented for heat exchange process. The numerical simulation method is applied to determine the basic physical parameters of wound bundles. By controlling the inlet fluid velocity varying in coil-wound heat exchanger to program and calculate the iterative process. The calculation data is analyzed by comparison of numerical result and the unit three dimensional pipe bundle model was built. Studies show that the introduction of numerical simulation can simplify the pipe winding process and accelerate the calculation and design of overall configuration in coil-wound heat exchanger. This method can be applied to the physical modeling and heat transfer calculation of pipe bundles in coil wound heat exchanger, program to calculate the complex heat transfer changing with velocity and other parameters, and optimize the overall design and calculation of spiral bundles.


Author(s):  
Xiangbo Kong ◽  
Yuan Fu ◽  
Jianyu Zhang ◽  
Huiju Lu ◽  
Naxiu Wang

A FLiNaK high temperature test loop, which was designed to support the Thorium Molten Salt Reactor (TMSR) program, was constructed in 2012 and is the largest engineering-scale fluoride loop in the world. The loop is built of Hastelloy C276 and is capable of operating at the flow rate up to 25m3/h and at the temperature up to 650°C. It consists of an overhung impeller sump-type centrifugal pump, an electric heater, a heat exchanger, a freeze valve and a mechanical one, a storage tank, etc. Salt purification was conducted in batch mode before it was transferred to and then stored in the storage tank. The facility was upgraded in three ways last year, with aims of testing a 30kW electric heater and supporting the heat transfer experiment in heat exchanger. Firstly, an original 100kW electric heater was replaced with a 335kW one to compensate the overlarge heat loss in the radiator. A pressure transmitter was subsequently installed in the inlet pipe of this updated heater. Finally, a new 30kW electric heater was installed between the pump and radiator, the purpose of which was to verify the core’s convective heat transfer behavior of a simulator design of TMSR. Immediately after these above works, shakedown test of the loop was carried out step by step. At first the storage tank was gradually preheated to 500°C so as to melt the frozen salt. Afterwards, in order to make the operation of transferring salt from storage tank to loop achievable, the loop system was also preheated to a relatively higher temperature 530°C. Since the nickel-base alloy can be severely corroded by the FLiNaK salt once the moisture and oxygen concentration is high, vacuum pumping and argon purging of the entire system were alternatively performed throughout the preheating process, with the effect of controlling them to be lower than 100ppm. Once the salt was transferred into the loop, the pump was immediately put into service. At the very beginning of operation process, it was found that flow rate in the main piping could not be precisely measured by the ultrasonic flow meter. Ten days later, the pump’s dry running gas seal was out of order. As a result, the loop had to be closed down to resolve these issues.


2010 ◽  
Vol 132 (5) ◽  
Author(s):  
Seok-Ki Choi ◽  
Seong-O Kim ◽  
Hoon-Ki Choi

A numerical study for the evaluation of heat transfer correlations for sodium flows in a heat exchanger of a fast breeder nuclear reactor is performed. Three different types of flows such as parallel flow, cross flow, and two inclined flows are considered. Calculations are performed for these three typical flows in a heat exchanger changing turbulence models. The tested turbulence models are the shear stress transport (SST) model and the SSG-Reynolds stress turbulence model by Speziale, Sarkar, and Gaski (1991, “Modelling the Pressure-Strain Correlation of Turbulence: An Invariant Dynamical System Approach,” J. Fluid Mech., 227, pp. 245–272). The computational model for parallel flow is a flow past tubes inside a circular cylinder and those for the cross flow and inclined flows are flows past the perpendicular and inclined tube banks enclosed by a rectangular duct. The computational results show that the SST model produces the most reliable results that can distinguish the best heat transfer correlation from other correlations for the three different flows. It was also shown that the SSG-RSTM high-Reynolds number turbulence model does not deal with the low-Prandtl number effect properly when the Peclet number is small. According to the present calculations for a parallel flow, all the old correlations do not match with the present numerical solutions and a new correlation is proposed. The correlations by Dwyer (1966, “Recent Developments in Liquid-Metal Heat Transfer,” At. Energy Rev., 4, pp. 3–92) for a cross flow and its modified correlation that takes into account of flow inclination for inclined flows work best and are accurate enough to be used for the design of the heat exchanger.


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