Flexibility and robustness of a high-temperature air/ceramic thermocline heat storage pilot

Abstract

A high-temperature air/ceramic thermocline packed-bed heat storage pilot was designed and built to measure the effects of operating parameters and quality of the heat resource on its performance, with a horizontal duct of square section. The influence of inlet air flow rate during the discharging phase and the impact of a degraded inlet heat resource during the charging phase were studied. The results revealed that the horizontal orientation of the bed didn't generate a thermal radial gradient. Results also show that the overall cycle efficiency is weakly affected by the changes in the operating conditions. Thermocline heat storage is surprisingly well-suited to managing resource instabilities. It forms a robust, flexible high temperature storage system applicable for industrial use to recover and deliver erratically produced waste heat.

Experimental and numerical analysis of a packed-bed thermal energy storage system designed to recover high temperature waste heat: an industrial scale up

“…This horizontal geometry facilitates the implementation of the TES on site for waste heat recovery. Lopez Ferber et al built a horizontal experimental setup, which was the first step leading to a containerized Eco-Stock® [18]. The radial temperature revealed to be homogeneous, which means that the thermocline was not altered by the horizontal configuration on the tested range of flowrate (39, 72 and 123 kg.s −1 ).…”

“…Figure 2 shows the principle of the charging and discharging steps of the Eco-stock®. The charging step was already detailed elsewhere [18].…”

“…They defined specific indicators for waste heat recovery, as opposed to those used for solar applications. They also looked at the influence of degraded conditions on the charge and discharge of the storage, by varying the temperature and the flowrate [18]. The degraded inlet flow had no effect on the performances of the storage.…”

Single-tank thermal energy storage systems for concentrated solar power: Flow distribution optimization for thermocline evolution management

“…Nowadays, the increasing energy consumption worldwide, the higher price of fossil fuels and the environmental impacts of greenhouse gas (GHG) emission stimulate the use of renewable resources as the alternative [Nicolas et al, 2019]. Solar energy conversion by Concentrated Solar Power (CSP) technology has a great potential within the future energy scenario because the integrated thermal energy storage (TES) systems can largely enhance the reliability and the dispatchability, allowing the production of electricity on demand [Ellingwood et al, 2020;Pelay et al, 2019;Zhang et al, 2016].…”

Development of a Thermal Energy Storage Pressed Plate Ceramic Based on Municipal Waste Incinerator Bottom Ash and Waste Clay

“…It can represent a new valorization path providing new feedstock for ceramic industry and saving resources and environmental impacts related to clay and sand extraction. An interesting application calls for high temperature storage systems, using ceramics as sensible thermal storage material in thermocline packed bed or structured bed systems [15,16]. Some authors worked on such waste-based ceramics, using molten asbestos containing wastes [17], metallurgical slags [18] or coal fly ash [19], mostly using the petrurgic method implying casting and controlled cooling from molten state, a technique that is not considered as easily transferable to industry and massproduction.…”