Study on the high-pressure hydrogen gas flow characteristics of the needle valve with different spool shapes

The needle valve is a critical control unit for high-pressure hydrogen systems such as hydrogen refueling stations, which is the infrastructure of hydrogen energy. As an important part of the needle valve, the valve spool affects the flow characteristics of hydrogen in the valve and then affects the working performance and safety of the high-pressure hydrogen valve. In this paper, based on the real hydrogen gas model and the finite volume method, a CFD model of the high-pressure hydrogen needle valve is con-structed to find out the influence of the valve spool shape on the performance and flow characteristics of the high-pressure hydrogen needle valve. The results show that high-pressure hydrogen will produce a sudden change in pressure around the valve spool and there will be a local high-speed area, and the turbulent intensity will also increase. The arc cone spool can increase the flow by 2%-8% at different openings of the valve, and reduce the maximum speed at the spool by 15% at small openings. In addition, the sudden change of pressure and the eddy current have also been improved. Flat-bottomed cone spool re-duces turbulence intensity and energy consumption. Therefore, it can be concluded that changing the shape of the valve spool to have a larger flow area at a small opening can make the high-pressure hydrogen valve have a better flow field distribution. Flattening the cone angle of the spool can improve the turbulent flow in the valve. The research in this paper can provide research accumulation and theoretical support for the optimization design of the needle valve of the high-pressure hydrogen system.(c) 2022 Hydrogen Energy Publications LLC. Published by Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.