Heat accumulator with aerogel-based thermal insulation material

Introduction. Installations for thermal energy storage make it possible to smooth peak loads and provide stability of heat and power system. These solutions are of particular relevance for private households. The purpose of this paper is to analyze the feasibility of using a heat accumulator based on talc-magnesite and with aerogel thermal insulation.

Materials and methods. In order to determine the temperature on the insulation surface and visualize the temperature profile, simulation in the ANSYS software package was carried out. Autodesk Inventor was selected as an automatic design system.

Results. Images of temperature profiles were obtained at 350 °C for thermal insulation thicknesses: 20 and 50 mm for aerogel, 70 and 150 mm for mineral wool. The analysis showed that for all options the surface temperature remained below 60 °C, which indicates the correct choice of insulation thickness. For the thermal insulation option made of mineral wool (150 mm) and aerogel (50 mm), the surface temperature turned out to be significantly lower than necessary, which made it possible to reduce the thickness of the insulation layer to 70 mm for mineral wool and 20 mm for aerogel, respectively. The results obtained allow us to conclude that the use of aerogel-based thermal insulation can significantly reduce the thickness of the heat-insulating layer.

Conclusions. Despite the complexity and high cost of creating thermal insulating materials based on aerogel, its use as part of a thermal accumulator will help avoid many problems associated with aging, destruction and frequent replacement of thermal insulation, reduce the load on thermal insulation structures and significantly increase the economic efficiency of thermal power systems, reducing losses during production and transfer of thermal energy.

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