Simulation of pre-cooling of a liquefied natural gas storage tank

Before filling the liquefied natural gas(LNG) into the storage tank, a pre-cooling operation is needed to avoid the rapid dropping of temperature. In the present study, a numerical model of the pre-cooling of a LNG storage tank is presented in this paper. The heat and mass transfer during the pre-cooling process in the storage tank and the thermal conduction in the tank walls are taken into consideration in the current model. The simulation results show that the LNG droplets cannot cover the whole tank and there exists a maximum spray region. During the pre-cooling, the cool-down rate of the tank mainly depends on the LNG flow rate. The tank bottom part shows larger cool-down rate than the side wall. The maximum cool-down rate takes place at the center of the tank bottom. Due to backflow at the tank center, the wall temperature of this part will not decrease monotonically. © All Right Reserved.