Cold Thermal Energy Storage for Reliable Ship Cooling Under Thermal Cycling and Cooling Loss

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Cold Thermal Energy Storage for Reliable Ship Cooling Under Thermal Cycling and Cooling Loss

Yang, Sam / Ordonez, Juan

We evaluated the viability of integrating a cold thermal energy storage (CTES) into an all-electric ship to mitigate the aftermath of thermal cycling and cooling loss by providing additional thermal damping. 1D dynamic CTES and counterflow heat exchanger (HX) models were developed and solved in dimensionless forms to assess the proposed cooling configuration based on the following: (1) the impact of chiller HX (evaporator) design on thermal damping without the CTES; and (2) the effects of adding a CTES next to the chiller as a complementary thermal damper (HX + CTES). Numerical results demonstrate the higher sensitivity of the damping effect to the total number of transfer units (N) than the HX mass, and the required N to achieve the same damping effect reduces nonlinearly with increasing HX mass. Furthermore, the HX + CTES outperforms the HX of the same total mass at higher N when the effect of heat transfer overcomes that of thermal inertia, and its merit becomes more evident when we compare the operation of these two configurations. This work thus reveals the potential of HX + CTES as a practical approach for improving the overall ship cooling reliability.