CFD investigation of level fluctuations in steam accumulators as thermal storage: A direct steam generation application

Concentrating solar power plants with direct steam generation have the possibility to store generated energy in thermal form very easily. This is achieved by using two-phase accumulators which heat stored directly tanks filled water and a saturated state. The Llo plant, owned SUNCNIM France, has nine such connected parallel. During unloading of storage, withdrawn from operators observe oscillations liquid level between tanks. To ensure that turbine never supplied water, maximum filling limited certain safety level, resulting reduction storage capacity accumulators. objective our study understand origin these order optimize thus performance plant. exploitation plant’s operating data allowed us identify several points can cause instability. this phenomenon, computational fluid dynamics modelling was carried out. Several parametric studies were performed select boundary conditions models be applied system. Finally, shows levels vary mainly due pressure imbalance drops feed network. A first solution, simple implement real system, proposed mitigate fluctuations.