Abstract

Solar thermal storage technology has undergone significant development in recent years, especially about the types of storage fluids through the search for new mixtures that offer greater performance and energy storage autonomy. On the other hand, there is a new problem which is the way to remove these salts for a new use, at the University of Antofagasta there is a small-scale system for emptying these salts stored in a small tank. The system consists of a tower in which a mixture of salt is sprayed at high temperature and solidified by means of a heat transfer process inside the tower in which air circulates at room temperature. This document shows the hydrodynamic analysis of these particles inside the tower, the air and the interaction between them and the surrounding fluid. The analysis is performed using a Eulerian-Lagrangian approach using the Ansys Fluent R18.1 Computational Fluid Dynamics package through a CFD-DPM coupling.