What is high temperature thermal energy storage?

High temperature thermal energy storage offers a huge energy saving potential in industrial applications such as solar energy, automotive, heating and cooling, and industrial waste heat recovery. However, certain requirements need to be faced in order to ensure an optimal performance, and to further achieve widespread deployment.

What are the chemical requirements for heat storage materials?

Chemical requirements are very similar for sensible and latent heat storage materials ( Table 2 ). Candidate materials should have long-term chemical stability, no chemical decomposition, should be compatible with the container materials and the HTF, non-toxic and non-flammable, and they should present no phase segregation.

Why do sensible heat storage systems require large volumes?

How-ever, in general sensible heat storage requires large volumes because of its low energy density (i.e. three and fi ve times lower than that of PCM and TCS systems, respectively). Furthermore, sensible heat storage systems require proper design to discharge thermal energy at constant temperatures.

Is energy storage a good indicator of performance?

While energy storage is a good indication of performance, it is only one measure. Thermal power, thermal losses, material stability, system size, dehydration and hydration temperature and humidity are other parameters vital to determining the system suitability to a particular application or climate .

Can thermal energy be stored in a heat storage media?

Thermal energy (i.e. heat and cold) can be stored as sensible heat in heat stor-age media, as latent heat associated with phase change materials (PCMs) or as thermo-chemical energy associated with chemical reactions (i.e. thermo-chemical storage) at operation temperatures ranging from -40°C to above 400°C.

Are thermochemical energy storage systems feasible?

As reviewed, the feasibility of thermochemical energy storage systems has been shown through small prototypes. At the material level, wherever composite materials are used there is an improvement in performance, which is a direct result of the instability of salt hydrates .