Effect of Integrating Metal Wire Mesh with Spray Injection for Liquid Piston Gas Compression

• Main Authors: Barah Ahn, Vikram C. Patil, Paul I. Ro
• Format: Article
• Language: English
• Published: MDPI AG 2021-06-01
• Series: Energies
• Subjects: compressed air energy storage; liquid piston; spray cooling; heat transfer enhancement; isothermal gas compression
• Online Access: https://www.mdpi.com/1996-1073/14/13/3723

Heat transfer enhancement techniques used in liquid piston gas compression can contribute to improving the efficiency of compressed air energy storage systems by achieving a near-isothermal compression process. This work examines the effectiveness of a simultaneous use of two proven heat transfer enhancement techniques, metal wire mesh inserts and spray injection methods, in liquid piston gas compression. By varying the dimension of the inserts and the pressure of the spray, a comparative study was performed to explore the plausibility of additional improvement. The addition of an insert can help abating the temperature rise when the insert does not take much space or when the spray flowrate is low. At higher pressure, however, the addition of spacious inserts can lead to less efficient temperature abatement. This is because inserts can distract the free-fall of droplets and hinder their speed. In order to analytically account for the compromised cooling effects of droplets, Reynolds number, Nusselt number, and heat transfer coefficients of droplets are estimated under the test conditions. Reynolds number of a free-falling droplet can be more than 1000 times that of a stationary droplet, which results in 3.95 to 4.22 times differences in heat transfer coefficients.