Abstract
This study was conducted to improve the flow distribution of air after a single 90-degree bend for temperatures above ambient conditions. In the literature, no study has been performed in the literature testing a flow conditioner for heated compressible flow. This study used an existing Thermal Energy Storage (TES) system for flowrates above 100 m(3)/h with Reynolds numbers over 10,000 was used. Due to a single 90-degree bend in the inlet flow a distance of three diameters from the entrance to the tank, the flow distribution was considerably shifted to the side of the outer bend. The constrained system was tested with various flow conditioners with fluid temperatures between the ambient temperature and 60 degrees C. The Spearman and the Mitsubishi Heavy Industries (MHI) plates were the most effective at improving the flow under all tested conditions. The system was modeled for different flow conditioners and validated using a computational fluid dynamic (CFD) model.