® creck or upaates Proceedings of the ASME 2019 Heat Transfer Summer Conference T2019 July 14-17, 2019, Bellevue, WA, USA HT2019-3439 ANALYSIS ON THERMAL DESIGN CONCERN OF VAPOR COOLED SHIELD FOR CRYOGENIC TANKS Wenbing Jiang, Zhongqi Zuo, Yonghua Huang’ Institute of Refrigeration and Cryogenics ‘Shanghai Jiao Tong University ‘Shanghai, China ABSTRACT In the long run, storage of cryogenic propellants on orbit is ‘one ofthe most erucial technologies for future space exploration. Vapor cooled shield (VCS) has been considered as an effective ‘ool 10 intercept heat leakage from the environment into the cryogenic tanks, In addition 10 that, reduce or even eliminate propellant boil-off This serutiny ascertains a 3D model to investigate the temperature distribution on VCS, and also ‘conforms to the fact of temperature uniformity assumption in literature. The relationship amid the temperature distribution on VCS, the shield wall thickness. and the vented vapor's mass flow. rate is analyzed for series-ype VCS and parallel-ype VCS t0 Clarify the existing temperature gradient on VCS and the way it influences the MLI's insulation performance. The outcomes of the study could act asa beneficial too! for the thermal design of cervogenie VCS. Keywords: vapor cooled shield (VCS), cryogenic tank, ‘eryogenic propellant 4 INTRODUCTION ‘The hydrogen and oxygen pair propellant are being increasingly utilized in space missions owing to their high specific impulse and excellent. environmental friendliness, Propulsion systems prefer to have Hz and Os stored as liquids dduc to the hundred-times increase in density which significantly reduces the volume and pressure (and thus the mass) demand of the tanks required for the spacecraft [1]. However, owing to liquids’ ultra-low storage temperature of around 20K for LH: and 90K for LOs, one of the main problems encountered in cryogenic propellants on-orbit utilization is how to introduce a cultured insulation structure covering the tank to eliminate the hneat leakage from the outer space environment, Multilayer insulation (MLI) has been used widely in cryogenic tanks. Early studies showed that its thermal performance can be improved further by varying the layer * Contact author: huangyh@situ.edu.cn Peijie Sun, Peng Li Shanghai Institute of Aerospace System Engineering ‘Shanghai, China density ofthe layers [2], However, even ifthe heat leakage into the tank is small, the tank pressure will still increase ‘continuously duc to the propellants boil-off. When approaching, the upper limit of pressure, par of the cryogenic propellant vapor has to be vented, in the fact thatthe state-of-the-art space-used «ryocooler isnot powerful enough to get rid ofall the heat leaked into the tank[3}. Since the vented vapor is still very cold (slightly above its saturation temperature), it can be exploited to contribute to suppression of the leat penetration through the MLL ‘The concept of introducing a vapor cooled shield (VCS) embedded in the surrounding insulation has been studied theoretically in early 1957 by Scott]. Scott analyzed the thermal performance of a vacuum-insulated vessel aftr the VCS \was introduced, The results implied that the evaporation rate of a vapor-cool-shielded LHs vessel decreases by approximately. 62% of the unshielded one. Based on the second law of thermodynamics and entropy production minimization, Cunnington{S] calculated the boil-off rate of an If storage system and reported thatthe eryogen boil-offrate is proportional to the rate ofthe overall entropy production. Liggett etal (6, 7] evaluated experimentally the performance of compound insulation composed of MLI and VCS in an LH test facility ‘Their measurements at steady state indicated thatthe reduct in the boil-off rate of LH: using a single VCS is 35% of the case without VCS for a warm boundary at a temperature of 287K. Assuming a uniform temperature profile on the VCS, Kim et lS] established a one-dimensional model that predicted results ‘of double-VCS configurations with better performance in serial than in parallel. Babac{9] improved Kim(8]'s model by considering the two-dimensional (radial and axial) conductance. Lebar et al[10] used the Boeing Design Sheet tool to investigate and optimize the thermal performance of the MLI, the thermodynamic vent system (TVS) and the VCS combination architecture. They proposed an “integrated” configuration which Copyright © 2019 ASMEhas L#s vented only and has the LO: tank cooled by the vented He gas through a VCS to realize zero boil-off of the LO» tank. For on-orbit cryogenic storage tank application, Jiang etal [11] ‘optimized the thermal performance of composite insulation of VCS, foam, and MLI. Their results showed that the heat flux centering the tank can be reduced by 59.6% for LHa, 26.8% for LNs, 22.7% for LOs, and 20.3% for LCHs tanks respectively after the VCS is introduced and posited at MLI's thickness center. It should be noted that almost all the studies mentioned above assumed uniform temperature profile on the VCS. In other words, the temperature gradient on the VCS has been ignored. Meanwhile, there isa significant temperature difference between the inlet and outlet of the VCS. For example, the results in the literature (11) showed that the temperature difference between the VCS inlet and outlet were about 189K, 141K, 132K and, 1OTK for the LH, LNo, LO3, and LCHs tanks, respectively. Hence, the uniform temperature assumption needs verification, In addition, for the cases whose temperature distribution on VCS. {is not uniform, the impact of the temperature gradient on the effective thermal insulation performance should also be evaluated parametrcally to guide the design of VCS, In the present study, a three-dimensional (3D) model of the VCS js established. The temperature distribution on VCS with different shield thickness and mass flow rate ofthe vented vapor, are compared between serial-ype VCS and parallel-type VCS. In addition, the effect of the temperature gradient of the VCS on the MLI’s thermal performance is discussed, 2 CALCULATION MODEL AND NUMERICAL METHOD FIGURE 4: CRYOGENIC TANK WITH VCS AND MLI Ina cryogenic tank with VCS, the tank s usually surrounded by the combination of VCS and MLI, which is shown in Figure I In general, the VCS should be placed atthe center of MLL 10 achieve maximum insulation performance [11]. Thus, the MLL is, separated into two segments which are referred (o asthe “inner part” and “outer part”, respectively. The thermophysical process Within the VCS-MLI combination is as follows: the total heat flux fiom the warm end first goes through the “outer part” of the MLI; when it arrives atthe VCS, part of the heat flux is drawn cout by the vented cryogenic vapor; the residual heat flux continues to seep through the “inner part” of the MLL and. eventually enters into the tank. The liquid cryogen in the tank absorbs the heat coming from the “inner part” of the MLI and, changes to vapor. The vapor goes through the tube welded on the VCS (as shown in Figure 2), cools it, and it gradually vents to the environment as a “warm” gas, 2.1 Physical model ‘To compare the effect of VCS configuration on its thermal performance, both the seral-type and parallel-type are taken into ‘consideration, The modeled VCS has an aluminum metal shield coupled with a spiral tube or four parallel tubes acting as the ‘vapor flow path, which is displayed in Figure 2. The metal shield has the same size as the one modeled by Jiang [11 which has a diameter of 270 mm and a height of 400 mm. In order to compare the serial-type VCS and parallel type VCS under the same total ‘mass condition, the length of the spiral tube of the seral-type ‘VCS js equal to the total length of the four parallel tubes of the paralleltype VCS. The total tube(s) length and diameter are1600 ‘mm and 10 mm, respectively for both types. I (A) SERIAL-TYPE (@) PARALLEL-TYPE FIGURE 2: SCHEMATICS OF VCS CONFIGURATION: (A) ‘SERIAL-TYPE (B) PARALLEL-TYPE 2.2 Numerical and boundary conditions. ANSYS Fluent 18.2 is the solver tool to simulate the heat transfer phenomena within the VCS, The metal shield is entitled as a solid domain to account for heat conduction in the shield. While the tube is set as a fluid domain to account for the vapor flow and corresponding convective heat transfer. The coupling of heat conduction to convective heat transfer is achieved by using “interface” to exchange the data. Since the Reynolds ‘number ofthe vapor within the tube is only in the order of several hhundred [11], the laminar model is used. The SIMPLE method is utilized to couple the pressure and velocity. The discretization algorithms forall the variables is Second Order Upwind. ‘Theheat conductivity ofthe aluminum metal shield uses 154 Wim K). which is the imtegral average value between 77K and 200K. The vented vapor is nitrogen, which corresponds to our ‘experimental work. The thermal properties of nitrogen gas are retrieved from the NIST REFPROP 9.1 code [12]. Because the ML is set both inside and outside the VCS, the equivalent thermal resistance method is adopted here. That is, to apply the second boundary conditions tothe inner wall and outer wall of the VCS, the corresponding convective heat transfer coefficient implementation Copyright © 2019 ASMEis obtained by equation (1), where R represents the equivalent thermal resistance, in K m'/W; Av represents the thickness of the MLI, in mm: and represents the ML”. s equivalent thermal ‘conductivity, in Witm X). In the ongoing study, Ax and 2 are 1S mm and 10? Wim K) respectively. Therefore, the corresponding equivalent convective heat transfer coefficient equals 0.0667 Wi(mm? K). According to the literature [11], the steady state mass flow rate of the vented nitrogen gas for the present modeled VCS is 1.3510 kgls when heat transfer reaches equilibrium, w ar 2 A 3 TEMPERATURE DISTRIBUTION ON VCS 3.1 Effect of shield wall thickness on VCS's temperature distribution Temperature difference on VCS was calculated for shield wall thickness ranging from 0.01mm to 2mm as shown in Figure 3, while the mass flow rate maintains the steady equilibrium value of 1.35 X 10Skg/s. In Figure 3, ATmux denotes to the ‘maximum temperature difference on VCS i.e. the deviation between the highest temperature value and lowest temperature Value. While Taming denotes to the standard temperature deviation that is supposed to reflect the temperature uniformity more precisely. The curves inthe comparison groups in Figure 3 shows that the temperature difference on VCS decreases with increasing wall thickness, imespective for ATrax of ATuntuc: For the wall thickness of 0.01mm, the maximum temperature differences on VCS is as high as $8.7K and 57.5K for serial-type VCS and parallel-type VCS, respectively. However, when the ‘wall thickness is increased to 0.1mm, the maximum temperature differences on VCS decrease abruptly to 16.3K and 15.0K for serial-type VCS and parallel-type VCS, respectively. For the wall thickness of 2mm, maximum temperature differences on ‘VCS is decreased to only 1.1K and 0.9K for serial-type VCS and, parallel-type VCS, respectively. This result is consistent with our Gualitative judgment because larger thickness means a larger heat transfer area along the VCS height direction and thus lower, ‘thermal resistance and temperature gradient. Although the ‘maximum temperature difference on VCS is very high for the ‘wall thickness of 0.0mm, the standard temperature deviation is, 15.6K and 12.3K for serial-type VCS and parallel VCS-ype, respectively. And for the 0.lmm cas, the standard temperature deviation is merely 3.7K and 3.5K for serial-type VCS and parallel VCS-type, respectively. Limited by the VCS's structural, strength, the wall thickness of VCS is not usual to have a smaller value than 0.1mm, This means that temperature distribution on, ‘VCS js relatively uniform even for only 0.1mm thickness. For the thickness of Imm which is adopted inthe liceraure [11], the standard temperature deviation is merely 0.47K and 0.43K for setial-type VCS and parallel-type VCS. This fully demonstrates that the metal shield on VCS can be filly regarded as an isothermal surface, and the assumption of temperature ‘uniformity adopted in literature, such as [4, 5, 7, 8 10, 11), is reasonable when the VCS wail thickness is not lower than 0.1mm, Moreover, it can also be observed from Figure 3 that there is almost no difference for seril-type VCS and patallel- type VCS in terms of temperature uniformity. 0 = ay, Gera) (ST pe (ta) [sr paratey oS ay (aralle) ‘Temperature difference (K) 0) (Oe ae e Ex) ‘Wall thickness of VCS (mm) FIGURE 3: TEMPERATURE DIFFERENCE IN VCS VERSUS, "THE WALL THICKNESS (49 VAPOR COOLED SHIELD (B) SHIELD ONLY FIGURE 4: TEMPERATURE FILED OF SERIAL-TYPE VCS: (A) VAPOR COOLED SHIELD (B) SHIELD ONLY For the case of Imm thickness, the temperature fics for both serial-type VCS and parallel-iype VCS are presented in Figure 4 and Figure 5, respectively. From Figure 4 (a) and Figure 5 (a), it can be seen that the temperature of vented vapor increases with flowing through the tube. At an around two-fifths distance from tube inlet, the vented vapor is heated to its highest temperature value which equals the shicld temperature. This ‘means that the sensible heat of the cryogenic vented vapor is fully utilized. And from Figure 4 (b) and Figure 5 (b), it can be seen that the lowest temperature in metal shield appears at the inlet for both two VCS type. However, the temperature distribution law of serial-type VCS and parallel-ype VCS depends on their tube path direction. And the peak of the Copyright © 2019 ASMEisotherm line almost occurs at the point where contact with the tube center line. Although the temperature distribution law of ‘two kinds of VCS is different, the temperature gradient is quite small for both types. This indicates that litle attention should be paid to VCS configuration in terms of temperature uniformity for VCS designing. (A) VAPOR COOLED SHIELD (sy sHIELD onty FIGURE 5: TEMPERATURE FILED OF PARALLEL-TYPE ‘VCS: (A) VAPOR COOLED SHIELD (8) SHIELD ONLY 3.2 Effect of vapor mass flow rate on VCS's temperature distribution 20] Bis a 8 AT G a —— AT (parallel) i [ote Tana (al) Eos ony 40 80 120 160 Msss flow rate ofthe vapor (10°) FIGURE 6: IMPACT OF VENTING MASS FLOW RATE ON A ‘TEMPERATURE DIFFERENCE OF THE VCS. ‘As tank insulation’s thermal performance (and thus the mass flow rate of the vented vapor) will vary with the differe configuration of MLI, such as layer numbers or layer density. The effect of vapor’ mass flow rate on VCS's temperature istibution is also being considered. When the VCS wall, thickness remains Imm, the temperature difference versus mass flow rate of the vented vapor is shown in Figure 6. As shown, the maximum temperature differences for both serial-type VCS. and parallel-type VCS are below 2.1K. And the standard temperature deviations are below 0.5K. This implies that even ‘wien the thermal performance ofthe MLI alters, the temperature ‘uniformity on VCS is still ensured. In addition to that, the standard temperature deviation between serial-type VCS and pparallel-ype VCS is close enough, which also depicts that there is no concern regarding the VCS configuration (serial-ype or paralleltype) in terms of temperature uniformity for VCS designing, 4 EFFECT OF VCS'S TEMPERATURE DISTRIBUTION ON MLI'S INSULATION PERFORMANCE Although VCS's temperature uniformity is ensured in the ‘ongoing study objective. In contrast to that, in some extreme condition, when we utilize aluminum foil that has the thickness of 0.01mm as VCS [13], will eventually result in a relatively higher temperature difference. In addition to thal, the distinct difference of heat flux into the eryogenic tank amongst a uniform temperature VCS and a non-uniform temperature VCS is still unknown. Drawing a solution to the above problem, we structured a model to quantitatively study the effect of V4 {temperature distribution on MLI's insulation performance Tau" 180K 1k Four layers of ation shield in ML FIGURE 7: SCHEMATIC OF THE MODELED MLL ‘The physical model is entitled as Figure 7 which is being displayed. Keeping in mind the inerement of radiation heat transfer in the MLI, the physical model is being justified as four layers of the radiation shield and the radiation heat transfer is, being strictly considered. As Figure 7 shows that the outermost radiation layer (used for simulate VCS) is divided into four equivalent segments each possessing a distinct temperature, however, the average temperature ofthe four segments remains I80K. As the innermost layer is in direct contact with the cryogenic tank, its temperature is supposed to be at a range of TIK. The thickness of each radiation layer is 0.01mm and the emissivity is preferred to be as 0.3, ANSYS Fluent 18.2 is the solver tool used to simulate such a heat transfer phenomenon ‘And the DO model is adapted to take into account the radiation heat transfer between each radiation layer. The heat flux through the MLI under different temperature distribution in the outermost layer was calculated under the condition ofan average temperature ofthe outermost layer which is maintained ata range of 180K. In Figure 8 is displayed, the X coordinate denotes t0 the max temperature difference in the ‘outermost layer of the modeled MLI, which corresponds to the difference between Ty and Ty in Figure 7. Since it can be Copyright © 2019 ASME‘observed that the heat flux through the MLI increases with an increase in the max temperature difference in the outmost layer. Thisimplies that a larger temperature gradient on VCS will result in a poor insulation performance of MLI. Although this result ‘conforms tothe fact that the temperature distribution should be maintained as uniform as possible during the VCS designing, From the perspective of relative deviation, the heat flux deviation between the different max temperature difference value is not relatively high. For example, when temperature differences are 0K, 15K, and 30K, the heat fluxes are 3.38 Wim2, 3.40 Wim2, and 3.46 Wim2, respectively. The relative difference value between OK and 15K is merely 0.5%. The relative difference value between OK and 30K is 2.3%, In accordance withthe results in section 3.1 and section 3.2 which displays that, the max temperature difference is merely around 2K, the standard temperature deviation is even as low as around 0.4K for the ease whose VCS wall thickness is Imm, The relative heat flux difference will be below 0.09% as compared to a uniform, femperature (A Tam equals OK) VCS. Therefore, there is a minor concern to VCS" s temperature uniformity in terms of heat flux into the tank. 3.46 Heat flux (Wim?) bE s 338) ° 10 20 30 ‘Max temperature difference in outmost layer (K) FIGURE 8: HEAT FLUX VERSUS THE TEMPERATURE DIFFERENCE IN THE OUTMOST LAYER 5 CONCLUSIONS ‘A 3D model for predicting the temperature distribution of ‘VCS embedded in MLI was structured. Utilizing the model, the impacts ofthe shield wall thickness and mass flow rate of vented, vapor on VCS's temperature distribution were investigated. Leading to that, the effects of VCS's temperature distribution on MLI’s insulation performance has been considered. The following beneficial conclusions can be drawn: (1) Irrespective of the shield wall thickness and mass flow rate in the concemed range, both the seril-type VCS and paralleltype VCS's maximum temperature difference and. standard temperature deviation are within 1.3 K and 0.2 K, respectively. Thus, there is no need to have a concern regarding the VCS configuration in terms of temperature uniformity for VCS designing, (2) The maximum temperature difference and standard temperature deviation will decrease with the increment of the wall thickness. For the VCS whose wall thickness is Imm, the maximum temperature difference and standard temperature deviation are less than 2.1 K and 0.5 K respectively. Therefore, the assumptions made for the VCS. as an approximately isothermal surface are admissible. (3) Since the heat flux through the MLI increases as the VC's temperature gradient increases, the increment rate is slow. ‘The quantitative results signify that the VCS’s temperature gradient makes little difference t0 MLI's insulation performance. ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS ‘The authors appreciatively acknowledge the financial and academic support being endowed by the National Natural Science Foundation of China (No. 51676118), Shanghai ‘Aerospace Science and Technology Innovation Foundation (SAST2017-017), and Joint Aerospace Advanced Technology Research Foundation (No, USCAST2016-32). REFERENCES [1] Johnson, W. L., Hauser, D. M,, Plachta, D. W., Wang, X. ¥. J., Banker, B. F., Desai, P.., Stephens, J. R, and Swanger, A M., 2018, "Comparison of oxygen liquefaction methods for use on the Martian surface," Cryogenics, 90, pp. 60-68. [2] Wang, B., Huang, ¥. ., Li, P, Sun, PJ, Chen, Z. 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