Simone Zavattoni

High temperature thermocline TES – effect of system pre-charging on thermal stratification

The purpose of this study is to evaluate, by means of a computational fluid dynamics approach, the effect of performing an initial charging, or pre-charging, on thermal stratification of an industrial-scale thermocline TES unit, based on a packed bed of river pebbles. The 1 GWhth TES unit under investigation is exploited to fulfill the energy requirement of a reference 80 MWe concentrating solar power plant which uses air as heat transfer fluid. Three different scenarios, characterized by 4 h, 6 h and 8 h of pre-charging, were compared with the reference case of TES system operating without pre-charging. For each of these four scenarios, a total of 30 consecutive charge/discharge cycles, of 12 h each, were simulated and the effect of TES pre-charging on thermal stratification was qualitatively evaluated, by means of a stratification efficiency, based on the second-law of thermodynamics. On the basis of the simulations results obtained, the effect of pre-charging, more pronounced during the first cycles, is not only relevant in reducing the time required by the TES to achieve a stable thermal stratification into the packed bed but also to improve the performance at startup when the system is charged for the first time.

A 3 MWth parabolic trough CSP plant operating with air at up to 650 °C

Parabolic trough concentrating solar power (CSP) has long proven to be among the most viable options for large-scale solar electricity generation. However, conventional solar parabolic trough plants suffer from several technical and economical drawbacks. These include most notably a maximum operating temperature limited to below 450 °C, a difficulty in creating rigid metallic support structures with large trough apertures, and the need for complex thermal energy storage (TES) technologies. This has impelled the development of a novel trough-based CSP system comprising a 9 m aperture parabolic trough concentrator based on inflated metallized polymer films mounted on a concrete support structure, coupled to a solar receiver based on air as heat transfer fluid and to a packed bed of rocks sensible heat storage. The first power plant with this technology, with a nominal thermal power output of 3 MWth, has been constructed in Ait Baha, Morocco. We report on the details of the system and its components.

High-temperature thermocline TES combining sensible and latent heat - CFD modeling and experimental validation

The concept of combined sensible/latent heat thermal energy storage (TES) has been exploited to mitigate an intrinsic thermocline TES systems drawback of heat transfer fluid outflow temperature reduction during discharging. In this study, the combined sensible/latent TES prototype under investigation is constituted by a packed bed of rocks and a small amount of encapsulated phase change material (AlSi12) as sensible heat and latent heat sections respectively. The thermo-fluid dynamics behavior of the combined TES prototype was analyzed by means of a computational fluid dynamics approach. Due to the small value of the characteristic vessel-to-particles diameter ratio, the effect of radial void-fraction variation, also known as channeling, was accounted for. Both the sensible and the latent heat sections of the storage were modeled as porous media under the assumption of local thermal non-equilibrium (LTNE). The commercial code ANSYS Fluent 15.0 was used to solve the model’s constitutive conservation and transport equations obtaining a fairly good agreement with reference experimental measurements.The concept of combined sensible/latent heat thermal energy storage (TES) has been exploited to mitigate an intrinsic thermocline TES systems drawback of heat transfer fluid outflow temperature reduction during discharging. In this study, the combined sensible/latent TES prototype under investigation is constituted by a packed bed of rocks and a small amount of encapsulated phase change material (AlSi12) as sensible heat and latent heat sections respectively. The thermo-fluid dynamics behavior of the combined TES prototype was analyzed by means of a computational fluid dynamics approach. Due to the small value of the characteristic vessel-to-particles diameter ratio, the effect of radial void-fraction variation, also known as channeling, was accounted for. Both the sensible and the latent heat sections of the storage were modeled as porous media under the assumption of local thermal non-equilibrium (LTNE). The commercial code ANSYS Fluent 15.0 was used to solve the model’s constitutive conservation and tr...

Experimental and Numerical Investigation of Combined Sensible/Latent Thermal Energy Storage for High-Temperature Applications

Combined sensible/latent heat storage allows the heat-transfer fluid outflow temperature during discharging to be stabilized. A lab-scale combined storage consisting of a packed bed of rocks and steel-encapsulated AlSi(12) was investigated experimentally and numerically. Due to the small tank-to-particle diameter ratio of the lab-scale storage, void-fraction variations were not negligible, leading to channeling effects that cannot be resolved in 1D heat-transfer models. The void-fraction variations and channeling effects can be resolved in 2D models of the flow and heat transfer in the storage. The resulting so-called bypass fraction extracted from the 2D model was used in the 1D model and led to good agreement with experimental measurements.