Veröffentlichungen

The use of thermal energy storage in the district heating supply increases system efficiency. In the district heating supply, so-called slim hot water storage tanks can achieve this goal. This requires efficient storage tanks with low internal and external losses. Due to the special storage tank geometry, disadvantageous flow effects (e.g. wall flow) occur during loading (high internal losses). To overcome these fluid mechanical challenges, Platzer and al. (2023) propose swirl loading. This causes the loading fluid to enter the storage tank in a rotating manner. The flow changes fundamentally. This is where this article comes in. A storage tank is modeled and simulated by numerical flow simulation CFD with Ansys CFX. As a result, the vortex flows in the diffuser (e.g. longitudinal, transverse and Görtler vortices) become visible for the first time. The storage simulation shows the transient development of thermal stratification with vortex effects (e.g. Kelvin-Helmholtz vortices, head-nose structure, free shear layers).

Schlagwörter: Thermal energy storage, loading, radial diffuser with guiding elements, swirl, CFD, LES