Loading Slim Hot Water Tanks with and without Swirl Generation - First Results
Abstract
Hot water storage tanks (pressure vessels) enable the storage of water at over 100 °C. These storage tanks are often used in solar heat supply systems, in combined heat and power plants, in district heating networks and in industrial plants. During loading, flow effects occur in slim storage tanks, which are detrimental to the structure of thermal stratification. This work compares the thermal stratification structure for conventional radial diffusers with a new diffuser design that produces swirl flow. The studies utilized computational fluid dynamics (CFD) simulation. This allows detailed studies of the flow and modeling of several variants. This work is limited to empirical investigations. The first step is to clarify whether swirl generation can achieve advantages in loading.