Thermal destratification of cryogenic liquid storage tanks by continuous bubbling of gases

This paper focuses on thermal destratification and pressurisation inside thermally stratified storage tanks by continuous gas bubbling. The primary purpose of doing these studies is to better understand the effect of bubble dynamics on thermal destratification and quantify the extent of destratification. The volume of fluid and interface compression method of OpenFOAM CFD code is utilised for the present analysis. Different values of inlet gas velocities (V_g), orifice diameters (d_o), and arrangement of the orifices in triangular and square fashion with different pitches (p/d_o) are considered. In addition, the effect of gravitational forces (g/g_e) on thermal destratification is also reported. For all these cases, the effectiveness of thermal destratification is quantified in terms of a newly defined parameter, the destratification index (I_d). For V_g = 1 m/s, the I_d value is maximum compared to lower V_g values. It is seen that when the gas velocity increased from 0.3 m/s to 1.0 m/s, the average effectiveness in thermal destratification (I_davg) and pressure at the ullage increased by 44.38% and by 64.81%, respectively. The I_davg and pressure at ullage increased by 96.29% and 14.91%, respectively, when the g/g_e ratio changed from 0.3 to 3. Compared to the triangular arrangement with p/d_o = 10, the calculated I_davg increased by 30.67% when gas inlets were arranged with a square pitch of 10. For p/d_o = 4, 6 and 8, the increments in I_davg are of the order of 12.86%, 19.43% and 21.92%, respectively, for gas inlets arranged in a square fashion as compared to the triangular arrangement. It is found that continuous bubbling with gas inlets arranged in square pitch p/d_o = 10 gives higher effectiveness in thermal destratification. Thus, by these studies, one can develop a thermal destratification mechanism with continuous bubbling for optimum performance. Also, these studies give an overall idea of sparger design for getting the correct gas flow rate for thermal destratification within the cryogenic liquid storage tanks.