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Hot Well Module
Installation
Added by selecting "Create new installation".
Hot Well Details
- Name: Identifier for the installation.
Hot Well Design Life
Defines the operational period of the Hot Well.
- Installation Date: Date installation is complete.
- Decommission date (Optional): Date after which the installation is unavailable.
- Design Life (Optional): Number of years from installation date the installation will be available.
An installation date is required. If neither decommission date nor design life are present, the turbine is considered installed until the end of the simulation.
Hot Well Performance Details
- Ambient Temperature: Annualised average temperature of environment.
- Required Outlet Temperature: Lowest usable output temperature.
- Volume: Fluid volume of the container.
- Hot Well Liquid: Type of liquid (e.g. Water, Glycol or other fluids often used in cooling).
- Exterior Surface Area: Surface area of the container.
- Heat transfer Coefficient - Exterior: Total heat transfer coefficient from liquid to surrounding gas.
- Input Heat Exchanger Efficiency: Upstream efficiency of the heat exchanger in the system.
- Output Heat Exchanger Efficiency: Downstream efficiency of the heat exchanger.
- Input Heat Exchanger Capacity: Nominal input capacity in kWh of the heat exchanger.
- Output Heat Exchanger Capacity: Nominal output capacity in kWh of the heat exchanger.
Calculating Heat Transfer
This requires some thermodynamics to calculate if you do not have the information to hand, here is the methodology: 
The above diagram shows the Hot Well system and how each required piece of information is used. The Heat Loss / 30 minutes on the left of the diagram is defined by the heat of the hot well, it's surface area and the ambient temperature.
Volume and Surface Area are relatively easy to do with a tape measure and Google, for example, if you're doing this for a Cylinder, the Volume and Area are: $$ Volume = π r^{2} h:::Surface:Area=2πrh+2πr^{2}::: where:::r=Radius:::and::: h= Height $$ Heat Transfer Coefficient is defined by the characteristics of how heat can be transferred through a substance. In the example above, we have a Steel container with insulation applied to the outside.
The easiest method is to use Engineering Toolbox to find the Overall heat transfer coefficient. At the bottom of the page is the Multi Layered Walls section: 
You can fill in the Area and temperatures, however we don't need these for our purposes. We need to fill in the convective heat transfer coefficient, thickness of the walls and their thermal conductivity. In this example:
- hci - Convection inside container - The rate of energy transfer from the liquid (Water) to the tank (Steel) - 600W/m2K for free convection of water
- s1 - Thickness of the tank (Steel) - 3mm
- k1 - The rate of energy transfer through tank material (Steel) - 22W/m2K
- s2 - Thickness of the Insulation (glass mineral wool) - 25mm
- k2 - The rate of energy transfer through the insulation material (glass mineral wool) - 0.036W/m2K
- hco - Convection outside container - The rate of energy transfer from the air to the insulation (glass mineral wool) - 5W/m2K for a hot surface in air.
Values for h can be difficult to assign, here are some general and useful values to use
| Flow types | Values of h (W/m2K) |
|---|---|
| Forced convection; low speed flow of air over a surface | 10 |
| Forced convection; moderate speed flow of air over a surface | 100 |
| Forced convection; moderate speed cross- flow of air over a cylinder | 200 |
| Forced convection; moderate flow of water in a pipe | 3000 |
| Forced convection; molten metals | 2,000-45,000 |
| Forced convection; boiling water in a pipe | 50,000 |
| Forced Convection - water and liquids | 50-10,000 |
| Free Convection - gases and dry vapors | 5-37 |
| Free Convection - water and liquids | 50-3000 |
| Vertical plate in air with 30°C temperature difference | 5 |
| Boiling Water | 3,000-100,000 |
| Water flowing in tubes | 5-100 |
| Condensing Water Vapor | 5-100 |
| Water in free convection | 100-1200 |
| Oil in free convection | 50-350 |
| Gas flow on tubes/between tubes | 10-350 |
Operational Times and Maintenance
- Operational Times can be used to define the times when an installation is active.
- Maintenance is used to create shutdown periods to maintain assets or automatic costs based on the amount of hours an installation has run.
These are explained in more detail in the Operational Times and Maintenance Section after Modules.