Liquid air energy storage for decentralized micro energy networks with combined cooling, heating, hot water and power supply

Xiaohui She, Tongtong Zhang, Xiaodong Peng, Li Wang, Lige Tong, Yimo Luo, Xiaosong Zhang, Yulong Ding*

*Corresponding author for this work

Research output: Contribution to journalArticlepeer-review

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Abstract

Liquid air energy storage (LAES) has been regarded as a large-scale electrical storage technology. In this paper, we first investigate the performance of the current LAES (termed as a baseline LAES) over a far wider range of charging pressure (1 to 21 MPa). Our analyses show that the baseline LAES could achieve an electrical round trip efficiency (eRTE) above 60% at a high charging pressure of 19 MPa. The baseline LAES, however, produces a large amount of excess heat particularly at low charging pressures with the maximum occurred at ∼1 MPa. Hence, the performance of the baseline LAES, especially at low charging pressures, is underestimated by only considering electrical energy in all the previous research. The performance of the baseline LAES with excess heat is then evaluated which gives a high eRTE even at lower charging pressures; the local maximum of 62% is achieved at ∼4 MPa. As a result of the above, a hybrid LAES system is proposed to provide cooling, heating, hot water and power. To evaluate the performance of the hybrid LAES system, three performance indicators are considered: nominal-electrical round trip efficiency (neRTE), primary energy savings and avoided carbon dioxide emissions. Our results show that the hybrid LAES can achieve a high neRTE between 52% and 76%, with the maximum at ∼5 MPa. For a given size of hybrid LAES (1 MW×8 h), the primary energy savings and avoided carbon dioxide emissions are up to 12.1 MWh and 2.3 ton, respectively. These new findings suggest, for the first time, that small-scale LAES systems could be best operated at lower charging pressures and the technologies have a great potential for applications in local decentralized micro energy networks.
Original languageEnglish
Pages (from-to)1–17
Number of pages17
JournalJournal of Thermal Science
Volume30
Issue number1
Early online date3 Dec 2020
DOIs
Publication statusPublished - Jan 2021

Keywords

  • liquid air energy storage
  • cryogenic energy storage
  • micro energy grids
  • combined heating
  • cooling and power supply
  • heat pump

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