"Liquid piston gas compression utilizes a liquid to directly compress gas. The benefit of this approach is that liquid can conform to irregular compression chamber volume. The compression chamber is divided into many small little bores in order to increases the surface area to volume ratio. The heat transfer rate increases with increasing surface area to volume ratio. However, as the bore diameter becomes smaller, the viscous force increases. In order to maximize the heat transfer rate and to minimize the viscous force, computational fluid dynamics is used. ANSYS Fluent is used to simulate the liquid piston gas compression cycle. Having created the model in Fluent, different factors, including diameter, length, liquid temperature, and the acceleration are varied in order to understand how each factor affects the heat transfer and viscous energy loss. The results show that both viscous force and heat transfer rate increase as the diameter decreases. The viscous force increases and the heat transfer decreases as the length increases. Both the viscous force and heat transfer increase as the acceleration increases. The viscous force decreases as the liquid temperature increases. Results show that the highest compression efficiency of 86.4% is found with a 3mm bore radius and a short cylinder. The piston acceleration is advised to be below 0.5g in order to avoid surface instability problem."

This thesis describes detailed investigations of two different problems in gas-liquid two-phase flow, namely, a study of interfacial stability in a partially filled cylinder subjected to vertical oscillations and a study of heat and mass transfer from hot spray droplets injected into an closed vessel. The interfacial instability study considers experimental data taken from the author's previous work. Cylinders of various diameters, partially filled with water, ethanol or glycerol were subjected to a sinusoidal vertical motion. The critical acceleration, causing the interfacial wave to grow unstable, was found to be approximately constant for a given cylinder diameter, independent on the amplitude of the forcing oscillations. The experiments also indicate that the critical Acceleration always decreases with increasing cylinder diameter. A mathematical analysis of the interfacial instability is based on a stability investigation of a Mathieu equation. It is shown that the experimental data fall into unstable regions for a single, first mode of oscillations. This finding is supported by the experimental analysis given by Cilliberto and Gollub. The analysis shows the effects of the liquid column height on the interfacial instability to be dependent on tanh (k..l.). This multiplier is equal to 1 for the column heights of 250mm, 500 mm and 750 mm, investigated, and a given cylinder diameter, thus having no effect on the results. Computational analysis of the interfacial problem is developed which is based on the simplified MAC method incorporating the Continuum Surface Force (CSF) model for simulating the effects of surface tension. Computational experiments were run for water and glycerol, the two liquids of significantly different properties. The results are presented in the form of time sequenced plots showing the interfacial positions and graphs relating the interfacial wave amplitude and time. Stability of the interface is found to be dependent on the initial surface disturbance. Growth of the interfacial wave is observed in some cases. In the range of situations investigated, surface tension effects are found to have only a small influence both on the stability and frequency of the interfacial oscillations. The period of interfacial oscillations with no forcing vibrations is found to be in good agreement with the period predicted by mathematical analysis. Influence of the initial disturbance profile was also investigated. The results indicate that the interfacial wave adopts oscillatory behaviour similar to the other cases. The oscillation frequency of the interfacial wave undergoing forcing vibrations is found to match the findings of the mathematical analysis. The wave oscillates with an angular velocity equal to the multiples of the half the forcing vibration angular velocity, co/2. In the second investigation a testing rig was constructed to investigate the heat and mass transfer processes in dense hot sprays injected into an enclosed cylindrical vessel. Heat and mass transfer rates were investigated indirectly from the measurements of the gas - vapour mixture pressure rise in the cylinder. The experiments covered different combinations of the parameters influencing the processes. The number and size of spray nozzles, the vessel volume, the type of gas and the initial pressure level in the cylinder were investigated. The experimental results indicate that, for the range of solid cone nozzles tested, the heat and mass transfer characteristics are, to a first approximation independent of the size of the nozzles. The results also show that the rise of spray chamber internal pressure is directly proportional to liquid temperature and flowrate. An analysis, based on energy balances for the whole cylinder, has yielded a new dimensionless group incorporating the important parameters of droplet heat transfer namely the droplet velocity and radius, spray chamber dimensions, gravity, conductivity and convectivity. A good match has been found between the analytical results and experimental findings. An improved analysis, incorporating the effect of evaporation from drops, is also presented. It is based on simultaneous solution of energy and mass balance equations for a single droplet. Again, good agreement with the experimental results is found. Both analyses indicate that, for this particular case of dense, evaporative spray, the Nusselt number tends to have a value equal to I.

Le stockage d’énergie par air comprimé est une des technologies nécessaires à l’emploi massif des énergies renouvelables intermittentes, d’origine solaire ou éolienne. La compression d’air par piston liquide permet d’augmenter l’efficacité du stockage d’énergie en favorisant un échange thermique intense dans la chambre de compression. La description et l’évaluation de cet échange convectif pour des chambres de compression à faible rapport alésage/course ne sont cependant que peu étudiées dans la littérature scientifique. A l’aide d’une étude expérimentale menée sur deux bancs d’essais, l’échange convectif interne dans la chambre de compression est étudié. Une méthode inverse, couplée à la mesure de la température de l’air comprimé et de la position du piston, est employée afin de déterminer les transferts thermiques pariétaux instantanés au cours des compressions.Après avoir mis en lumière la présence systématique d’une transition du régime convectif de type laminaire vers un régime turbulent dans le volume d’air comprimé, de nouvelles corrélations d’échange convectif sont recherchées. Sur la base de 73 expérimentations, plusieurs formes de corrélations basées sur des nombres sans dimension sont optimisées puis comparées. Deux nouvelles corrélations du nombre de Nusselt, l’une en régime laminaire et l’autre en régime turbulent, sont ensuite sélectionnées. Un modèle instationnaire thermodynamique 1D de la chambre de compression est alors construit dans l’environnement Matlab / Simulink afin de tester la qualité de ces corrélations. Les résultats numériques sont ainsi comparés aux données expérimentales. Finalement, deux essais expérimentaux supplémentaires, réalisés sur un banc d’essai différent, permettent de confirmer la qualité des nouvelles corrélations d’échange convectif proposées. / Energy storage by compressed air would be one of the required technologies for enabling massive use of intermittent solar or wind renewable energy sources. Air compression using a liquid piston enables an increase in the energy storage efficiency by inducing an intense heat exchange in the compression chamber. Few studies reported in the literature have focused on the description and evaluation of the convective heat exchange for a low ratio compression chamber (L/D). Using an experimental study and two test benches, the internal convective heat transfer during compression has been studied. In addition to measuring liquid piston position and air pressure, an inverse method was used to determine the instantaneous parietal convective heat flow during compression. After highlighting the presence of a systematic transition from laminar to turbulent convective regime in the compressed air, new convective heat transfer correlations were sought. On the basis of 73 experiments, several correlation forms based on dimensionless numbers were optimized and compared. Two new Nusselt number correlations, one for laminar and the other for turbulent flow, were then selected. A 1D thermodynamic transient model of the compression chamber was built using Matlab / Simulink environment in order to test the quality of these correlations. Thus, numerical results and experimental data were compared. Finally, results from two additional experiments carried out on a different test bench have confirmed the quality of the new proposed correlations for convective heat exchange.