Abstract
The boil-off loss and self-pressurization have always been great concerns in the cryogen storage systems. Accurate prediction of the self-pressurization process in a cryogenic storage tank exposed to extremely low heat flux usually requires tremendous computational resources. General commercial computational fluid dynamic software is incompetent for pressure estimations lasting days or even months with regular hardware support. This paper proposed an optimized computational model for transient simulation of the self-pressurization process in cryogenic storage tanks based on the open source platform OpenFOAM. Ten times improvement in the calculation speed was achieved compared to the widely used commercial solvers, without compromising the accuracy. An optimal region was found and suggested for the evaporation and condensation coefficients. The commonly used “constant heat flux boundary” has been proved overestimating thermal stratification in the axial direction parallel to the tank wall. The model enables quick and accurate simulation for the long-term self-pressurization in cryogenic storage tanks applied in the industry for liquid hydrogen, liquefied natural gas, and liquid air products storage and deep space exploration programs. • 10 times improvement in the simulation speed is achieved. • The model’s precision is higher than the thermodynamic equilibrium models. • Effect of model coefficients on the self-pressurization evolution is revealed.
Published Version
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