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A Unique Heat Storage Technology Gathers Steam

By District Energy posted 04-09-2020 13:02

  

DOE Science News Source

Summary

Argonne’s thermal energy storage system, or TESS, was originally developed to capture and store surplus heat from concentrated solar power facilities. It is also suitable for a variety of commercial applications, including desalination plants, combined heat and power (CHP) systems, industrial processes, and heavy-duty trucks.

Being able to recover and use waste heat can raise efficiency and cut costs by extracting more energy from the same amount of fuel. In the case of an electricity or desalination plant running on concentrated solar power, the TESS can capture heat during the day and release it at night to keep the plant running. Argonne’s work to develop the system is funded by DOE’s Solar Energy Technologies Office.

"Any time you have a combustion process, you are wasting about 60 percent of the energy as heat," said Dileep Singh, a senior materials scientist at Argonne who has led the TESS development. "In a sense, this is a thermal version of a battery, where you charge and discharge heat rather than electricity."

Argonne's TESS is a form of latent heat storage, where the energy is contained within a phase-change material such as molten salt. While such materials are good at retaining heat, they are typically poor conductors, so it takes too long for them to absorb and release energy.

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