The Effect of Wet Compression on a Centrifugal Compressor for a Compressed Air Energy Storage System

Jianting Sun, Xin Zhou, Qi Liang, Zhitao Zuo and Haisheng Chen
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Jianting Sun: Institute of Engineering Thermophysics, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Beijing 100190, China
Xin Zhou: Institute of Engineering Thermophysics, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Beijing 100190, China
Qi Liang: Institute of Engineering Thermophysics, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Beijing 100190, China
Zhitao Zuo: Institute of Engineering Thermophysics, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Beijing 100190, China
Haisheng Chen: Institute of Engineering Thermophysics, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Beijing 100190, China

Energies, 2019, vol. 12, issue 5, 1-24

Abstract: There is an urgent demand to reduce compression power consumption in Compressed Air Energy Storage (CAES) systems. Wet compression has been widely used in gas turbines to reduce compressor power consumption and improve thermal efficiency, but this technology has not been applied yet in the CAES field. In this paper, a centrifugal compressor for CAES was numerically studied to investigate the effect of wet compression on compressor and droplet motion. The results showed that wet compression makes the performance curve shift to a high-pressure ratio/efficiency. Meanwhile, wet compression lowers the stall margin and narrows the stable operation range, and the effect is enhanced with the increase of water injection ratio or the decrease of average droplet diameter. Wet compression can effectively save compressor power consumption during energy storage, and at the designed pressure ratio, the power consumption can be reduced by 1.47% with a water injection ratio of 3% and an average droplet diameter of 5 μm. Influenced by the inertia and secondary flow, the droplets migrate to the impeller pressure and shroud side, thus causing brake loss by impacting on blades. The migration of droplets strengthens with the increase in the average droplet diameter and flow coefficient.

Keywords: compressed air energy storage; centrifugal compressor; wet compression; numerical simulation (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: Q Q0 Q4 Q40 Q41 Q42 Q43 Q47 Q48 Q49 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2019
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (3)

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