Experiment And Performance Simulation Study On The Novel Capsulated Plate Ice Storage Equipment

The ice thermal storage technology, as a technology of shifting on-peak electricity loads to off-peak periods and adapting the on-peak and off-peak demand charges management, is more and more popular and attached importance by all the countries. In order to solve the problem of short-circuited of the coolant and disadvantageous effect on heat transfer from the inside air and moreover enrich the type of ice thermal storage products home and abroad, a novel vertical capsulated plate ice storage equipment had been developed by our research group.Preliminary experiment has proved that the ice freezing and ice thaw characteristics of the vertical capsulated plate ice storage equipment is good, but whether the thickness of ice board and the width of flow channel of the ice storage equipment is the best, there is still no study on it . In addition,as the ice plate is placed vertical in the circular ice storage tank, a part of the space is not fully utilized, whether there are any ways to make full use of space to enhance economic indicators, it should be researched further mone . Therefore, based on the above issues this topic continues conduct the simulation study on the capsulated plate ice storage equipment.By using the mathematical model and procedures established with VB in preliminary experiment and simulation, changing the thickness of ice board and the width of flow channel parameters in the course of ice freezing and ice thaw, continuing to conduct a series of simulations and simulation results analyzed .As a part of space in circular ice storage tank is not being fully used, causing tank container size larger. To overcome the shortcoming, the ice board is designed in Drum-shaped , and selecting a part of the ice storage tank ,seting up geometric and mathematical model, simulating with Fluent, obtained the circular plate ice freezing and ice thaw characteristics. In this paper, three-dimensional state of storage phase change simulation with Fluent is the current leader in the field.The study results indicated that the thickness of ice board has an important impact on the ice freezing and ice thaw performance of the ice board, the thicker of the ice board, the longer icing or ice thawing time, the ice board is too thick to ice completely when the price in the valley within eight hours. The width of flow channel has little impact on the ice freezing and ice thaw performance of the ice board, as the width of flow channel is too small, when the ice expands, the width of flow channel will be more narrow, and because the width of the flow channel is smaller than width of the ice board, hence the change in width of the flow channel will not cause too much of the impact on the technical indicators, therefore, the ice board can be appropriate optimized in the width of the flow channel.Through comparing the main technical indicators of the Drum-shaped ice board storage tank with circular ice storage tank in the preliminary experiment,it is show that Drum-shaped ice board storage tank volume is smaller 37% than the early, heat exchanger areas containers decreased 18 percent. So this Drum-shaped ice board has greater significance in practical application, this innovative design provides guidance for the development and optimization of the ice storage equipment in the future.