Effect of Integrating Metal Wire Mesh with Spray Injection for Liquid Piston Gas Compression

Heat transfer enhancement techniques used in liquid piston gas compression can contribute to improving the efficiency of compressed air energy storage systems by achieving a near-isothermal compression process. This work examines the effectiveness of a simultaneous use of two proven heat transfer enhancement techniques, metal wire mesh inserts and spray injection methods, in liquid piston gas compression. By varying the dimension of the inserts and the pressure of the spray, a comparative study was performed to explore the plausibility of additional improvement. The addition of an insert can help abating the temperature rise when the insert does not take much space or when the spray flowrate is low. At higher pressure, however, the addition of spacious inserts can lead to less efficient temperature abatement. This is because inserts can distract the free-fall of droplets and hinder their speed. In order to analytically account for the compromised cooling effects of droplets, Reynolds number, Nusselt number, and heat transfer coefficients of droplets are estimated under the test conditions. Reynolds number of a free-falling droplet can be more than 1000 times that of a stationary droplet, which results in 3.95 to 4.22 times differences in heat transfer coefficients.

Design and construction of multi-cylinder type liquid piston Stirling engine

In a multi-cylinder type liquid piston Stirling engine (MCLPSE), liquid columns in U-shaped tubes play the role of solid pistons in a mechanical Stirling engine. Besides the straightforward structure, advantages of the MCLPSE are a relatively low operation temperature difference below 100 K and use of harmless working fluids of air and water. This study presents a mass spring model for the MCLPSE, from which we determine geometrical parameters of MCLPSE to achieve a target acoustic power production under a given temperature condition. The preliminary test results will be presented.

Analysis of Liquid Piston Compressibility in the Two-Stage Hybrid Positive-Displacement Machine

The effect of liquid compressibility in the two-stage piston hybrid positive-displacement machine with a liquid piston was considered. Based on the volume conservation equation, we developed a calculus methodology for the liquid compressibility during gas compression in the second stage of the compressor section. A numerical experiment made it possible to establish that some parameters have the greatest effect on the relative decrease in the height and velocity of the liquid layer. These parameters are the degree of pressure ratio; pipeline length; the polytropic index of the compression; the number of crankshaft revolutions. We found that the relative decrease in the liquid layer height is within 1 %, and the relative decrease in the liquid piston velocity is within 5 %. The paper analyses the liquid piston compressibility influence on the thermodynamic efficiency of the compression process and compressor performance.