Flow and heat transfer characteristics of air compression in a liquid piston for compressed air energy storage

El Mehdi Gouda, Mustapha Benaouicha, Thibault Neu, Yilin Fan and Lingai Luo

Energy, 2022, vol. 254, issue PB

Abstract: The breakthrough in energy storage technology is the key issue for the renewable energy penetration and compressed air energy storage (CAES) has demonstrated the potential for large-scale energy storage of power plants. Liquid piston (LP) technology has been developed to achieve the Isothermal CAES with improved efficiency, but the description and the physical understanding of the coupled flow and heat transfer dynamic behaviors are lacking. In this study, a 3D CFD model for LP compressor using finite-volume method and VOF method is developed and validated by the existing experimental data-sets. The air compression in the LP column is simulated and air flow and temperature characteristics are obtained and analysed in detail for the first time. Results clearly show the existence of different flow patterns over the compression time. The establishment of axisymmetric flow structure, its evolution and transition to totally chaotic one can be identified. The instabilities due to the high shear stress and frictions at the interface between the central-ascending & peripheral-descending streams may cause this flow structure disruption. The air temperature rise (32.5 K) at the end of compression is 7.7 times smaller than that of adiabatic operation, confirming the interests of LP in realizing Isothermal-CAES systems.

Keywords: Compressed air energy storage (CAES); Liquid piston (LP); Air compression; Flow regime; VOF method; Heat transfer (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2022
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (11)

Downloads: (external link)
http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0360544222012087
Full text for ScienceDirect subscribers only

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:eee:energy:v:254:y:2022:i:pb:s0360544222012087

DOI: 10.1016/j.energy.2022.124305

Access Statistics for this article

Energy is currently edited by Henrik Lund and Mark J. Kaiser

More articles in Energy from Elsevier
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Catherine Liu ().