Characteristic Study of Isochoric Heating in a Pressure Vessel

Abstract

Increasing of fluid pressure in phase change applications is an important area for research, as it requires high grade energy. Low grade energy (heat energy) may be employed to develop fluid pressure in selective applications with isochoric heating in a non-flow process. Pressure vessel is a common example working on isochoric heating process to develop steam pressure. Experiments are conducted in this vessel to analyze the characteristics of isochoric heating process. Some of the characteristics investigated are (i) mass of the steam leaving the vessel for a given volume ratio (mass of water contained in the vessel to volume of the vessel), ratio of time taken to release steam to heating time, ratio of enthalpy of the steam leaving the vessel to useful enthalpy rise of water and steam mixture for different volume ratio. The effect of insulating the circumference of the vessel on the above mentioned characteristics are also investigated in this paper. Further experiments using any liquid refrigerant as working medium can lead this research to attain a remarkable development of using low grade energy for refrigeration applications