10.07.2015   EUROSUN 2008

The Drake Landing Solar Community

The Drake Landing Solar Community (DLSC) consists of a small suburb of 52 homes, where at least 90% of the space heating load is to be provided from solar thermal energy within five years of its operation. A description of the DLSC’s operation is provided elsewhere [3]. In use at the DLSC are two short-term thermal stores (STTSs) which interact with the various thermal systems at the site. The STTSs are typical liquid thermal energy stores, albeit large. Their configuration is illustrated in Figure 1.

1.1.

EUROSUN 2008

1st International Congress on Heating, Cooling, and Buildings, ■ 7th to 10th October, Lisbon — Portugal /

t ank Dimensions.

• ~11.5 m (length)

• ~3 m (diameter)

separating flow within each tank

Operating Flow Rates:

• 3.35 L/s to 14.9 L/s (Re ~ 100,000 ^ 450,000)

Connector Pipe:

• 0150 mm

Tank Insulation:

• R-20 along tank shell

• Adiabatic conditions assumed during charging/discharging

Three Operating Loops:

Solar Collector Loop (0100 mm) District Heating Loop (075 mm) Seasonal Storage Loop (050 mm)

Figure 1. The Short-Term Thermal Stores at the Drake Landing Solar Community


Prior Work: A CFD Model of the Drake Landing STTSs

In a previous study by the authors [4], an effective CFD model of the STTSs was developed using the FLUENT 6.3.26 commercial software package. The model was validated against real performance data recorded at the Drake Landing site in October 2007. The modelling procedure developed in the previous work is applied similarly in this study, and is listed below in Table 1. Further information is provided in the original paper.

♦ PISO Pressure-Velocity coupling with neighbour correction

Подпись:

♦ Double-precision, ♦

segregated 1st-order implicit unsteady solver

♦ k-epsilon Realizable turbulent model

♦ Default simulation convergence criteria

♦

Polynomial correlation to define temperature dependent material properties (i. e., density). Thermodynamic data: [5]

Pressure under-relaxation of 0.9 Momentum under-relaxation of 0.2 Default values for all other components

Second Order Upwind ♦

discretization of momentum, turbulence, and energy. Body Force Weighted discretization of pressure
Подпись: Polynomial correlation to define temperature dependent material properties (i.e., density). Thermodynamic data: [5]

Table 1. Modelling parameters applied to the CFD simulation of the STTSs