A seasonal cold storage system based on separate type heat pipe for sustainable building cooling

Abstract

a b s t r a c tSeasonal cold storage is a high-efficient and environmental-friendly technique that uses the stored natural cold energy in winter (e.g., snow, ice or cold ambient air) for free-cooling in summer. This paper presents a seasonal cold storage system that uses separate type heat pipes to charge the cold energy from ambient air in winter automatically, without consuming any energy. The charged cold energy is stored in the form of ice in an insulated tank and is extracted as chilled water for cooling supply in summer, which help to reduce the chiller running time and reduce the associated electricity consumption and greenhouse gas emission significantly. A quasi-steady two-dimensional mathematical model of the system is developed for characterizing the dynamic performance of ice growth (i.e., cold charging). The model is validated using the field measurement data from an ice charging experiment conducted in Beijing. The impacts of various affecting factors, including the weather data and the key parameters of heat pipes, on the charging performance of the cold storage system are analyzed. The effectiveness and sustainability of the proposed system for cooling are demonstrated through a case study of a kindergarten building in Beijing.

Seasonal Thermal-Energy Storage: A Critical Review on BTES Systems, Modeling, and System Design for Higher System Efficiency

“…Taylor presented the first ice pond for air conditioning at Princeton university in 1979, producing annual savings of 31,000 $/year [68]. Yan et al optimize a seasonal cold energy storage to supplement capacity to existing chillers with a payback time of 6 years [69]. Skosberg and Nordell describe a snow storage system in Sundsvall, Sweden for a hospital hosting a well-insulated pit equal to 2000 MWh of cooling capacity [45].…”

“…Skosberg and Nordell describe a snow storage system in Sundsvall, Sweden for a hospital hosting a well-insulated pit equal to 2000 MWh of cooling capacity [45]. Efforts to develop seasonal cooling storage methods are most notably made in Japan and Norway [45,65,[69][70][71].…”

Optimization of seasonal storage for community-level energy systems: status and needs

“…Seasonal cold storage is also an efficient method of cooling which is reviewed widely (Yan et al 2016;Veerakumar and Sreekumar 2016;Mastani Joybari et al 2015). In this method, naturally or artificially produced cold energy in winter (e.g., snow, ice, cold ambient air, frozen soil and rocks) is stored as ice in a tank and can be extracted as chilled water to meet building cooling needs in summer.…”

“…In this method, naturally or artificially produced cold energy in winter (e.g., snow, ice, cold ambient air, frozen soil and rocks) is stored as ice in a tank and can be extracted as chilled water to meet building cooling needs in summer. Seasonal cold storage using heat pipes for cooling in buildings is investigated by Yan et al (2016), but studies are limited in this area. A summary of the articles reviewed in this section, specifying the cooling application we well as the energy storage mechanism and type, is provided in Table 5.…”

“…Modeling is important for performance prediction and design of seasonal thermal energy stores due to their longterm effects (Allegrini et al 2015). For instance, modeling activities using analytical and numerical techniques have been reported for a range of thermal storages, including underground hot water systems (Ochs et al 2010), ground buried sand beds (Terziotti et al 2012), borehole energy storage (Wang et al 2012;Rad et al 2013;Koohi-Fayegh and Rosen 2014;Cui et al 2015;Eslami-nejad and Bernier 2013), aquifer thermal energy storage (Réveillèrea et al 2013), cold storage (Yan et al 2016;Alawadhi 2008), phase change thermal storage (Verma and Singal 2008;Dutil et al 2014) and thermochemical storage . Models for seasonal storage in water tanks or gravel pits are available in some software tools such as TRNSYS (Dickinson et al 2013).…”