An assessment of thermocline-control methods for packed-bed thermal-energy storage in CSP plants, Part 1: Method descriptions

Open access
Date
2019-01-15Type
- Journal Article
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Cited 19 times in
Web of Science
Cited 20 times in
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ETH Bibliography
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Abstract
Thermocline thermal-energy storage (TES) suffers from so-called thermocline degradation, which refers to the flattening of temperature gradients in the TES with successive charging-discharging cycles. Thermocline degradation increases the variations of the heat-transfer fluid (HTF) outflow temperatures, decreases storage utilization factors, and increases specific TES material costs. Methods that prevent or reduce thermocline degradation by changing the operation of the storage are called thermocline-control (TCC) methods. The assessment of TCC methods is the main objective of this work. Three TCC methods that were chosen for this assessment are described in this paper. Two methods, based on either extracting or injecting HTF through ports, were derived from previously published methods while the third method, based on mixing multiple HTF streams, one of which is extracted through a port, is novel. In a companion paper (Geissbühler et al., Solar Energy, submitted 2018), the three TCC methods are assessed for air and molten salt as HTF using simulations of stand-alone storages as well as storages integrated into a concentrated solar power plant. Show more
Permanent link
https://doi.org/10.3929/ethz-b-000317654Publication status
publishedExternal links
Journal / series
Solar EnergyVolume
Pages / Article No.
Publisher
ElsevierSubject
Thermal energy storage; Thermocline; Packed bed; Thermocline controlRelated publications and datasets
Is continued by: https://doi.org/10.1016/j.solener.2018.12.016
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Show all metadata
Citations
Cited 19 times in
Web of Science
Cited 20 times in
Scopus
ETH Bibliography
yes
Altmetrics