CFD-based simulation study on cooling methods using low-temperature chilled water from ice storage tanks after complete ice melting in district cooling external ice melting systems

External melt ice-on-coil systems are widely used in district cooling systems due to their advantages of excellent heat transfer ability, low outlet water temperature, rapid cooling release speed and low energy consumption of ice melting. However, after the ice-melting and cooling release process, there is still a large amount of low-temperature chilled water remaining around 1.5 ℃ in the ice storage tank, which cannot continue to be used for cooling. This paper proposes a method to fully exploit the cooling potential of the low-temperature chilled water remaining in the ice storage tanks after ice melting by modifying the conventional structure of external melt ice-on-coil storage tanks. Taking a district cooling station in Shenzhen as a case study, this paper employs the CFD method to simulate and analyse the cooling ability. The study results show that designing partition walls and overflow holes in the ice storage tank can extend the duration of maintaining the outlet water temperature at a low level, thereby fully exploiting the cooling potential of the post-discharging ice storage tank and improving the energy efficiency ratio (EER) of the cooling system.