Analysis of the thermal inertia of pipelines in SHIP

Abstract

Solar Heat for Industrial Processes (SHIP) is one of the most promising alternatives to decarbonize the industry. The present work aims to analyze the influence of thermal pipelines inertia on a small-scale solar concentrator of 20 kW with a phase-change material thermal storage. Two dynamic simulations for this SHIP system integrated into a tube steel factory in Romania were developed with Dymola software: one of them considered the thermal inertia of the pipelines and the other did not. By comparing the simulation results, we have found that the pipeline inertia conveyed delays in the start-up sequence of the system and decreased the temperatures of heat transfer fluids until the steady state is reached. Furthermore, the thermal inertia decreased the total energy produced. Other researchers have also found delays due to the inertia of the pipelines, but the delays were lower than ours. The difference in the delays may be due to the small scale of the SHIP system analyzed in the present work. Finally, we can conclude that dynamic simulation became important in SHIP systems because of the difference found with the non-inertia simulation.