Process integration of thermal energy storage systems – Evaluation methodology and case studies

Abstract

As a key tool for decarbonization, thermal energy storage systems integrated into processes can address issues related to energy efficiency and process flexibility, improve utilization of renewable energy resources and thus reduce greenhouse gas emissions. However, integration of these systems is dominated by the variety of potential processes in which the storage technologies can be deployed as well as the various benefits they deliver. Therefore, the requirements for thermal energy storage systems vary greatly depending on the chosen application, just as the systems themselves have different capabilities depending on their technical principles. This paper addresses this issue by developing a systematic methodology that approaches the challenge of characterizing and evaluating thermal energy storage systems in different applications in three concrete steps. To begin, a set of guidelines for process analysis has been created to disclose process requirements for storage integration. The methodology continues by explicitly defining the system boundary of a thermal energy storage system, as well as addressing technical and economic parameters. Finally, the approach concludes by determining the benefit of an integrated thermal energy storage system to an application and examines how key performance indicators vary based on the perspectives of different stakeholders. Within this work, the methodology is then applied to two case studies of hightemperature storage in concentrating solar power and cogeneration plants. Also introduced are the concepts of retrofit and greenfield applications, which are used to clarify differences between integrated storage systems. The paper shows how such a systematic approach can be used to consistently analyse processes for storage integration, facilitate comparison between thermal energy storage systems integrated into processes across applications and finally grasp how different interests perceive the benefits of the integrated storage system. This type of systematic methodology for technology integration has not been previously developed and as such, is a novel and important contribution to the thermal energy storage community. In the long term, this work builds the basis for a discussion on benefits of thermal energy storage system integration with diverse stakeholders including storage system designers, process owners and policy makers.

A Scientometric Approach to Analyze Scientific Development on Renewable Energy Sources

“…The authors Cabeza with node degree 38 and Hodge with node degree 34 are the highest in this map. Cabeza has 12 articles related to the subject of solar or photovoltaic energy, some of them being about thermal energy storage systems (Cabeza et al, 2017;Gibb et al, 2018;Jacob et al, 2016;Peiró et al, 2018;Ruiz-Cabañas et al, 2017), key performance indicators for energy storage systems (Cabeza et al, 2015), and other correlated subjects. Hodge has seven papers indexed in Scopus about high renewable power systems (Du et al, 2018;Du et al, 2019), trends in wind and solar energy forecasting technologies (Hodge et al, 2018;Orwig et al, 2015), estimation of solar irradiance (Zhang et al, 2019), and other related articles.…”

“…Journal of Data and Information Science Solar radiation is strongly connected with forecasting (Hodge et al, 2018;Orwig et al, 2015), energy storage linked to solar concentrators (Cabeza et al, 2017;Gibb et al, 2018;Jacob et al, 2016;Peiró et al, 2018;Ruiz-Cabañas et al, 2017). Other strong connections are between: energy conservation and energy utilization; energy storage and heat storage; optimization and energy resources; and photovoltaic effects and optimization.…”

Packed-bed sensible thermal energy storage system using demolition wastes for concentrated solar power plants

“…Although storage efficiency increases with decreasing bed void fraction, the effect on efficiency is less. Gibb et al [21] defined the total system energy storage capacity as sum of solid phase and sum of the components. Based on this definition, total stored energy is calculated by Equation (11) and (12).…”

Hierarchical control for the start-up procedure of solar thermal fields with direct storage

“…From the design point of view, as solar energy is an intermittent source, the integration of thermal storage systems in these kind of facilities has become a key factor to increase the performance of the technology (Rovira et al, 2011;Pelay et al, 2017;Gibb et al, 2018). Considering the solar field, the storage device, and the power block or the thermal load (depending of the kind of process powered), several layout configurations can be found in the literature attending to the number of storage tanks used in the facility, and the way in which they are connected to the system (Biencinto et al, 2014).…”