scholarly journals Recent Status and Prospects on Thermochemical Heat Storage Processes and Applications

Entropy ◽  
2021 ◽  
Vol 23 (8) ◽  
pp. 953
Author(s):  
Tadagbe Roger Sylvanus Gbenou ◽  
Armand Fopah-Lele ◽  
Kejian Wang

Recent contributions to thermochemical heat storage (TCHS) technology have been reviewed and have revealed that there are four main branches whose mastery could significantly contribute to the field. These are the control of the processes to store or release heat, a perfect understanding and designing of the materials used for each storage process, the good sizing of the reactor, and the mastery of the whole system connected to design an efficient system. The above-mentioned fields constitute a very complex area of investigation, and most of the works focus on one of the branches to deepen their research. For this purpose, significant contributions have been and continue to be made. However, the technology is still not mature, and, up to now, no definitive, efficient, autonomous, practical, and commercial TCHS device is available. This paper highlights several issues that impede the maturity of the technology. These are the limited number of research works dedicated to the topic, the simulation results that are too illusory and impossible to implement in real prototypes, the incomplete analysis of the proposed works (simulation works without experimentation or experimentations without prior simulation study), and the endless problem of heat and mass transfer limitation. This paper provides insights and recommendations to better analyze and solve the problems that still challenge the technology.

2021 ◽  
Vol 11 (2) ◽  
pp. 682
Author(s):  
Gabriele Seitz ◽  
Farid Mohammadi ◽  
Holger Class

Calcium oxide/Calcium hydroxide can be utilized as a reaction system for thermochemical heat storage. It features a high storage capacity, is cheap, and does not involve major environmental concerns. Operationally, different fixed-bed reactor concepts can be distinguished; direct reactor are characterized by gas flow through the reactive bulk material, while in indirect reactors, the heat-carrying gas flow is separated from the bulk material. This study puts a focus on the indirectly operated fixed-bed reactor setup. The fluxes of the reaction fluid and the heat-carrying flow are decoupled in order to overcome limitations due to heat conduction in the reactive bulk material. The fixed bed represents a porous medium where Darcy-type flow conditions can be assumed. Here, a numerical model for such a reactor concept is presented, which has been implemented in the software DuMux. An attempt to calibrate and validate it with experimental results from the literature is discussed in detail. This allows for the identification of a deficient insulation of the experimental setup. Accordingly, heat-loss mechanisms are included in the model. However, it can be shown that heat losses alone are not sufficient to explain the experimental results. It is evident that another effect plays a role here. Using Bayesian inference, this effect is identified as the reaction rate decreasing with progressing conversion of reactive material. The calibrated model reveals that more heat is lost over the reactor surface than transported in the heat transfer channel, which causes a considerable speed-up of the discharge reaction. An observed deceleration of the reaction rate at progressed conversion is attributed to the presence of agglomerates of the bulk material in the fixed bed. This retardation is represented phenomenologically by mofifying the reaction kinetics. After the calibration, the model is validated with a second set of experimental results. To speed up the calculations for the calibration, the numerical model is replaced by a surrogate model based on Polynomial Chaos Expansion and Principal Component Analysis.


2021 ◽  
Vol 0 (0) ◽  
Author(s):  
Ata Ur Rehman ◽  
Muhammad Zahir Shah ◽  
Shehla Rasheed ◽  
Wasim Afzal ◽  
Muhammad Arsalan ◽  
...  

Abstract Salt hydrates (MgSO4 and ZnSO4) impregnated in zeolites, offer a variety of improvements, mostly providing a large surface area for salt hydrates and water molecules. A composite of 5 and 10% of salt contents were prepared as heat storage materials. The study’s finding showed that dehydration enthalpy of MgSO4 (1817 J g−1) and ZnSO4 (1586 J g−1) were 10 and 15% improved than pure salt hydrates by making composites. During the hydration process of composites, the water sorption is 30–37% improved and further the increasing of salt contents in composites enhances more 10% increase in the water resorption. The cyclicability of MgSO4/zeolite and ZnSO4/zeolite were 45 and 51% improved than their corresponding pure salt hydrates. The effect of humidity on the water sorption result reveals that composites of MgSO4/zeolite and ZnSO4/zeolite at 75% relative humidity (RH), the mass of water are 51 and 40% increase than 55% RH.


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