Development of a Continuous Fluidized Bed Reactor for Thermochemical Energy Storage Application

Thermochemical energy storage (TCES) represents one of the most promising energy storage technologies, currently investigated. It uses the heat of reaction of reversible reaction systems and stands out due to the high energy density of its storage materials combined with the possibility of long-term storage with little to no heat losses. Gas–solid reactions, in particular the reaction systems CaCO3/CaO, CaO/Ca(OH)2 and MgO/Mg(OH)2 are of key interest in current research. Until now, fixed bed reactors are the state of the art for TCES systems. However, fluidized bed reactors offer significant advantages for scale-up of the system: the improved heat and mass transfer allows for higher charging/discharging power, whereas the favorable, continuous operation mode enables a decoupling of storage power and capacity. Even though gas–solid fluidized beds are being deployed for wide range of industrial operations, the fluidization of cohesive materials, such as the aforementioned metal oxides/hydroxides, still represents a sparsely investigated field. The consequent lack of knowledge of physical, chemical, and technical parameters of the processes on hand is currently a hindering aspect for a proper design and scale-up of fluidized bed reactors for MW applications of TCES. Therefore, the experimental research at Technical University of Munich (TUM) focuses on a comprehensive approach to address this problem. Preliminary experimental work has been carried out on a fixed bed reactor to cover the topic of chemical cycle stability of storage materials. In order to investigate the fluidization behavior of the bulk material, a fluidized bed cold model containing a heat flux probe and operating at atmospheric conditions has been deployed. The experimental results have identified the heat input and output as the most influential aspect for both the operation and a possible scale-up of such a TCES system. The decisive parameter for the heat input and output is the heat transfer coefficient between immersed heat exchangers and the fluidized bed. This coefficient strongly depends on the quality of fluidization, which in turn is directly related to the geometry of the gas distributor plate. At TUM, a state-of-the-art pilot fluidized bed reactor is being commissioned to further investigate the aforementioned aspects. This reactor possesses an overall volume of 100 L with the expanded bed volume taking up 30 L. Two radiation furnaces (64 kW) are used to heat the reactor. The heat of reaction of the exothermal hydration reaction is removed by water, evaporating in a cooling coil, immersed in the fluidized bed. Fluidization is being achieved with a mixture of steam and nitrogen at operating temperatures of up to 700 °C and operating pressures between −1 and 6 bar(g). The particle size is in the range of d50 = 20 μm. While initial experiments on this reactor focus on optimal operating and material parameters, the long-term goal is to establish correlations for model design and scale-up purposes.