Numerical Investigation of the Phase Change Behavior of Liquefied CO2 in a Type-C Cryogenic Tank

As global warming accelerates, the Paris Agreement has emphasized the urgent need for technologies that reduce and manage carbon dioxide emissions. Consequently, carbon capture and storage (CCS) has emerged as a critical area of research. For the safe and efficient transportation of captured carbon dioxide in cryogenic tanks, the design must accurately account for the phase change behavior of liquefied carbon dioxide (LCO2). This study proposes a numerical approach to evaluate the thermal insulation performance of cryogenic tanks by simulating the phase change process of LCO2. The phase transition of LCO2 was simulated in a horizontally oriented Type-C cryogenic tank using the open-source computational fluid dynamics (CFD) framework OpenFOAM (v2312). To validate the numerical methodology, the phase change in liquefied nitrogen (LN2) inside a tank was first simulated and compared with available experimental data. A mesh-independence study was then conducted to determine the optimal grid resolution, and the effects of different equations of state (EOS) for both liquid and gaseous phases, as well as various turbulence models, were examined. The boil-off rate (BOR) and boil-off gas (BOG) generation within the tank were predicted, and variations in internal pressure and flow fields were analyzed. The simulation results over 5000 s showed that the internal tank pressure increased from 7.8 bar to 8.1 bar, and the average temperature rose by approximately 1.3 K. The total mass of LCO2 decreased from 1439.3 kg to 1431.0 kg.