Effects of design and flow conditions on the losses of hot water storage tanks

In this paper the author describes a method which is being developed for calculation of the energetic and exergetic losses of hot water storage tanks (HWST). As input data for the calculation only the details of design, materials and main aspects of intended operation conditions are to be included. Based o experimental investigations and extensive numerical modeling with the CFD-code Fluent, semi-empirical correlation was developed as a tool for storage tank designers. In this way, tank losses could be approximated already at the time of tank design and a lot of experimental tast could be avoided.