NUMERICAL PREDICTION OF HIGHER SELF-PRESSURIZATION RATES IN A TYPICAL STORAGE VESSEL

摘要

Self-pressurization, as a result of vaporization can occur in many scientific and technical applications like cryogenic storage tanks, pressurized water reactors etc. Predictions of both the pressurization and vaporization rates are vital in defining design requirements conforming to the tanks maximum working pressure and expected liquid losses. Predicting precisely the highly transient interface phenomenon due to mass transfer coupled with phase change due to evaporation is the major challenge encountered in modeling selfpressurization. The recent improvements of the multiphase flow modeling in the ANSYS FLUENT code make it now possible to simulate these mechanisms in detail without the need of user defined functions. The volume-of-fluid (VOF) method in conjunction with evaporationcondensation mass transfer model has been used here. In this paper we are extending the proven capability of VOF model for predicting higher selfpressurization rates due to phase change in storage vessels.