Exploring the Limits of Empirical Correlations for the Design of Energy Systems with Complex Fluids: Liquid Sulfur Thermal Energy Storage as a Case Study

IF 2.6 3区 工程技术 Q3 ENERGY & FUELS Journal of Energy Resources Technology-transactions of The Asme Pub Date : 2023-08-25 DOI:10.1115/1.4063256
M. Oliver, Munjal Shah, Janna Martinek, K. Nithyanandam, Zhiwen Ma, Michael Martin
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Abstract

Sustainable energy technologies often use fluids with complex properties. As an example, sulfur is a promising fluid for use in thermal energy storage systems, with highly non-linear thermophysical properties. The viscosity of liquid-phase sulfur varies by four orders of magnitude due to polymerization of sulfur rings between 400 K and 500 K, followed by depolymerization of long rigid chains, and a decrease in viscosity, as temperature increases. These properties may compromise the accuracy of long-established empirical correlations in the design of TES systems. This work uses omputational fluid dynamics to compute steady-state free convection heat transfer coefficients of sulfur in concentric cylinders at temperatures between 400 K and 600 K. The results show that uneven distributions of high and low viscosity sulfur in the system cause variations in flow patterns and highly nonlinear heat transfer coefficients as temperature gradients increase. As a result, existing empirical correlations for describing system performance become inaccurate. Comparison of simulation results to predictions from well-established literature correlations show that errors may surpass 50%. Nusselt versus Rayleigh number correlations for heat transfer are significantly affected by the loss of self-similarity. The analysis proves that existing correlations are not able to capture the complex properties of sulfur in this temperature range, suggesting that alternative modeling techniques are needed for design and optimization of sulfur TES systems. These challenges are unlikely to be limited to sulfur as a working fluid or TES, but will appear in a range of energy systems.
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探索复杂流体能量系统设计的经验关联极限——以液硫储能为例
可持续能源技术通常使用具有复杂性质的流体。例如,硫是一种很有前途的流体,用于热能储存系统,具有高度非线性的热物理性质。液相硫的粘度变化为4个数量级,这是由于硫环在400k至500k之间发生聚合,随后是长刚性链的解聚,随着温度的升高,粘度降低。这些性质可能会损害TES系统设计中长期建立的经验相关性的准确性。本文采用计算流体动力学方法,计算了温度在400 K至600 K之间的同心圆柱体中硫的稳态自由对流换热系数。结果表明,随着温度梯度的增大,高粘度硫和低粘度硫在体系中的不均匀分布导致了流动模式的变化和传热系数的高度非线性。结果,现有的描述系统性能的经验相关性变得不准确。将模拟结果与已建立的文献相关性的预测进行比较,结果表明误差可能超过50%。热传递的努塞尔与瑞利数相关性受到自相似性损失的显著影响。分析证明,现有的相关性无法捕获该温度范围内硫的复杂特性,这表明需要替代建模技术来设计和优化硫TES系统。这些挑战不太可能局限于作为工作流体或TES的硫,而是将出现在一系列能源系统中。
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来源期刊
CiteScore
6.40
自引率
30.00%
发文量
213
审稿时长
4.5 months
期刊介绍: Specific areas of importance including, but not limited to: Fundamentals of thermodynamics such as energy, entropy and exergy, laws of thermodynamics; Thermoeconomics; Alternative and renewable energy sources; Internal combustion engines; (Geo) thermal energy storage and conversion systems; Fundamental combustion of fuels; Energy resource recovery from biomass and solid wastes; Carbon capture; Land and offshore wells drilling; Production and reservoir engineering;, Economics of energy resource exploitation
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