Abhishek Thakur

Bio: Abhishek Thakur is an academic researcher from Indian Institute of Technology Bombay. The author has contributed to research in topics: Porous medium & Packed bed. The author has an hindex of 1, co-authored 2 publications receiving 5 citations.

A review of recent study on the characteristics and applications of pebble flows in nuclear engineering

Abstract: This paper reviews the recent three-year progress on the investigations of pebble bed flows in nuclear engineering. Both the application of pebble beds in the fission reactors and the fusion reactors are included. The fundamental characteristics of packing, flows, conduction, convection, radiation, and the effective thermal conductivity of pebble beds are reviewed. The important issues on the design of the pebble beds as well as that related to the reactor safety are also introduced. In addition, the advances in measurement techniques and numerical coupled methods for exploring the pebble flow characteristics are categorized and summarized too.

Performance analysis of an air rock thermocline TES tank for concentrated solar power plants using the coupled DEM–CFD approach

Abstract: One of the most common solutions currently available to meet future energy needs in the world is concentrated solar power (CSP) plants combined with thermocline thermal energy storage (TES) tank subsystems. The air rock thermocline TES tank asserts to be an effective and inexpensive TES subsystem for CSP plants. In this study, a discrete element method (DEM) combined with a numerical model of computational fluid dynamics (CFD) was adopted to investigate the thermal performance of a scale model of an air rock thermocline TES tank. The study is carried out to optimize TES thermocline tank's thermal behavior by changing the heat transfer fluid (HTF) inlet velocity. The DEM–CFD coupled model is validated against analytical and experimental data. The results show that the use of the distributor reduced the influence of the wall effect by distributing the HTF in a regular way as the fluid passes through it, especially at high inlet velocity. Moreover, the results show that each TES tank subsystem has a critical velocity at which the tank operates most efficiently. Furthermore, the results demonstrated that the maximum value of the overall cycle efficiency was equal to 70.15% at 10 m/s, while the minimum value was equal to 42.5% at 2 m/s. The highest capacity and utilization ratio are 81.31 and 72.81% at 16 m/s, while the lowest capacity and utilization ratio are 52.01 and 44.75% at 2 m/s. The pumping energy needed to overwhelm the pressure drop rises when the HTF inlet velocity increases. This study can provide an effective reference for the efficient operation regulation and optimal design of the thermocline tank.