변온유입 성층축열조의 충전과정에 대한 해석적 접근

Analytical approaches to the charging process of stratified thermal storage tanks with variable inlet temperature

This paper presents an approximate analytical solution to a two-region one-dimensional model for the charging process of stratified thermal storage tanks with variable inlet temperature in the presence of momentum-induced mixing. Based on the superposition principle, an arbitrary-varying inlet temperature is decomposed into inherent discontinuous steps and continuous intervals approximated as a finite number of piecewise linear functions. This approximation allows the temperature of the upper perfectly-mixed layer to be expressed in terms of constant, linear and exponential functions with respect to time. Applying the Laplace transform technique to the model equation for the lower thermocline layer subject to each of three representative interfacial conditions yields compact-form solutions, a linear combination of which constitutes the final temperature profile. A systematic method for deriving solutions to the plug-flow problem having polynomial-type boundary conditions is also established. The effect of adiabatic exit boundary on solution behaviors proves to be negligible under the actual working conditions, which justifies the assumption of semi-infinite domain introduced in the solution procedure. Finally, the approximate solution is validated by comparing it with an exact solution obtained for a specific variation of inlet temperature. Excellent agreements between them suffice to show the necessity and utility of this work.