Abstract
Buildings contribute to 75% of total electricity consumption and 80% of peak electricity demand in the United States. A significant portion of building electricity consumption goes to space conditioning. Therefore, using thermal energy storage (TES) to decouple the building electricity consumption and the fluctuating space-conditioning load has significant potential to shift peak electricity demand and improve the stability of the grid. To provide effective TES within the spatial constraints in buildings, a three-phase absorption thermal battery (TATB) system with very high energy storage density was designed and studied. The TATB stores low-temperature heat in hydrate crystals of salts and supports space conditioning through absorption systems. In this study, a benchtop TATB using lithium chloride (LiCl) hydrate crystals as the storage material was tested under practical operating conditions for its energy storage density and discharge rate. The TATB successfully generated LiCl hydrate crystals during charging mode and then dissolved the crystals during discharging mode. A material-based energy storage density of 300 kWh/m3 (specific energy of 903 kJ/kg) was achieved with a discharge rate of up to 1.3 kW thermal energy. The test results verified the high performance of the TATB and encouraged further development of this technology.
| Original language | English |
|---|---|
| Article number | 118311 |
| Journal | Energy |
| Volume | 208 |
| DOIs | |
| State | Published - Oct 1 2020 |
Funding
This research was supported by the Department of Energy (DOE) Office of Energy Efficiency and Renewable Energy, Geothermal Technologies Office. The authors would also like to acknowledge Ms. Arlene Anderson and Joshua Mengers of the Geothermal Technologies Office. This manuscript has been authored by UT-Battelle, LLC, under contract DE-AC05-00OR22725 with DOE. The US government retains and the publisher, by accepting the article for publication, acknowledges that the US government retains a nonexclusive, paid-up, irrevocable, worldwide license to publish or reproduce the published form of this manuscript, or allow others to do so, for US government purposes. DOE will provide public access to these results of federally sponsored research in accordance with the DOE Public Access Plan (http://energy.gov/downloads/doe-public-access-plan). This research was supported by the Department of Energy (DOE) Office of Energy Efficiency and Renewable Energy , Geothermal Technologies Office . The authors would also like to acknowledge Ms. Arlene Anderson and Joshua Mengers of the Geothermal Technologies Office. This manuscript has been authored by UT-Battelle, LLC, under contract DE-AC05-00OR22725 with DOE. The US government retains and the publisher, by accepting the article for publication, acknowledges that the US government retains a nonexclusive, paid-up, irrevocable, worldwide license to publish or reproduce the published form of this manuscript, or allow others to do so, for US government purposes. DOE will provide public access to these results of federally sponsored research in accordance with the DOE Public Access Plan ( http://energy.gov/downloads/doe-public-access-plan ).
Keywords
- Crystallization
- Energy storage density
- Experimental investigation
- Thermal energy storage
- Three-phase absorption
