Study on ventilation effect for a large space in an underground hydropower station

Abstract

Due to the urgent need for reducing carbon emissions, an increasing number of pumped storage power stations have been constructed and used considering its obvious advantages of energy saving. However, relevant design guidance and technical research failed to meet the development demand. There is only a small number of studies focusing on the prediction and evaluation of ventilation system in singlestory stations, however, little on the integral connected plant floors. Thus, it is significant to study safety operation technology of deep underground pumped storage power stations, especially in terms of thermal and humidity environment. A reduced-scale (1/30) model based on an engineering project was set up, and numerical simulations were carried out to study the temperature and velocity distribution in the large underground space under the summer design condition (L=21.1×104m3/s, T=19°C, Q=997KW). Results show that the temperature on the right side of the powerhouse is slightly higher than that on the left side, and the gap is approximately from 1°C to 4°C. Moreover, local overheating may occur in some places. The side air supply velocity and location should be paid more attention to in designing air distribution.