Project title: Two-phase polytropic energy storage

Completed

Other Power and Storage Technologies(Energy storage)

Basic and strategic applied research
Applied Research and Development

ENGINEERING AND TECHNOLOGY (Mechanical, Aeronautical and Manufacturing Engineering)

Not Cross-cutting

Project Contact
Artemis Intelligent Power Limited

Collaborative Research & Development

Innovate UK

01 May 2015

30 April 2016

12 months

£95,633

Scotland

Competition Call: 1405_CRD_ENE_GEN_ENCATESR1 - Energy Catalyst - Late Stage - Round 1. Activity Energy Catalyst Rnd 1 Early Stage

Project Contact, Artemis Intelligent Power Limited

Note this record is the InnovateUK part of project, there is another part which is referenced via the EPSRC record EP/N508573/1

The project aims to prove the feasibility of a grid-scale energy storage technology based around thermal energy stores in the form of un-pressurised insulated containers of rock gravel. One store will be at high temperature and the other at low temperature. The concept is scalable to very large size and should have storage time-constants well beyond diurnal. Unlike pumped storage schemes, such storage systems could be built almost anywhere and close to or within large electrical load centres such as cities. In the storage phase, electrical energy will be transformed to mechanical energy and thence to heat and cold in the gravel stores via thermodynamic compression and expansion processes not unlike those used in refrigerators and heat pumps. Energy recovery to generate electricity will be by the reverse sequence. To allow the use of cost-effective un-pressurised thermal rock stores, the working fluid of the compression and expansion processes will be a combination of a gas and a liquid which will will transport thermal energy between the pressurised gas and the un-pressurised thermal stores. .The project aims to prove the feasibility of a grid-scale energy storage technology based around thermal energy stores in the form of un-pressurised insulated containers of rock gravel. One store will be at high temperature and the other at low temperature. The concept is scalable to very large size and should have storage time-constants well beyond diurnal. Unlike pumped storage schemes, such storage systems could be built almost anywhere and close to or within large electrical load centres such as cities. In the storage phase, electrical energy will be transformed to mechanical energy and thence to heat and cold in the gravel stores via thermodynamic compression and expansion processes not unlike those used in refrigerators and heat pumps. Energy recovery to generate electricity will be by the reverse sequence. To allow the use of cost-effective un-pressurised thermal rock stores, the working fluid of the compression and expansion processes will be a combination of a gas and a liquid which will will transport thermal energy between the pressurised gas and the un-pressurised thermal stores. .

05/02/18