Compressed-Air energy storage (CAES) is a well-established technology for storing the excess of electricity produced by and available on the power grid during off-peak hours. A drawback of the existing technique relates to the need to burn some fuel in the discharge phase. Sometimes, the design parameters used for the simulation of the new technique are randomly chosen, making their actual construction difficult or impossible. That is why, in this paper, a small-scale CAES without fossil fuel is proposed, analyzed, and optimized to identify the set of its optimal design parameters maximizing its performances. The performance of the system is investigated by global exergy efficiency obtained from energy and exergy analyses methods and used as an objective function for the optimization process. A modified Real Coded Genetic Algorithm (RCGA) is used to maximize the global exergy efficiency depending on thirteen design parameters. The results of the optimization indicate that corresponding to the optimum operating point, the consumed compressor electric energy is 103 . 83 k W h and the electric energy output is 25 . 82 k W h for the system charging and discharging times of about 8.7 and 2 h, respectively. To this same optimum operating point, a global exergy efficiency of 24.87% is achieved. Moreover, if the heat removed during the compression phase is accounted for in system efficiency evaluation based on the First Law of Thermodynamics, an optimal round-trip efficiency of 79.07% can be achieved. By systematically analyzing the variation of all design parameters during evolution in the optimization process, we conclude that the pneumatic motor mass flow rate can be set as constant and equal to its smallest possible value. Finally, a sensitivity analysis performed with the remaining parameters for the change in the global exergy efficiency shows the impact of each of these parameters.
scite is a Brooklyn-based organization that helps researchers better discover and understand research articles through Smart Citations–citations that display the context of the citation and describe whether the article provides supporting or contrasting evidence. scite is used by students and researchers from around the world and is funded in part by the National Science Foundation and the National Institute on Drug Abuse of the National Institutes of Health.
customersupport@researchsolutions.com
10624 S. Eastern Ave., Ste. A-614
Henderson, NV 89052, USA
This site is protected by reCAPTCHA and the Google Privacy Policy and Terms of Service apply.
Copyright © 2024 scite LLC. All rights reserved.
Made with 💙 for researchers
Part of the Research Solutions Family.