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.
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Abbreviations
- COPc :
-
Cooling performance of the mechanical chiller
- COPh :
-
Heating performance of the air source heat pump
- e :
-
Specific exergy/kJ·kg−1
- h :
-
Specific enthalpy/kJ·kg−1
- m :
-
Mass flow rate/kg·s−1
- P :
-
Pressure/MPa
- Q :
-
Heat load/kW
- r :
-
Pressure ratio
- s :
-
Specific entropy/kJ·kg−1 ·K−1
- T :
-
Temperature/K
- t :
-
Time/h
- W :
-
Power consumption/generation/kW
- Y :
-
Liquid air yield
- eRTE:
-
Electrical Round Trip Efficiency
- HE:
-
Heat Exchanger
- HHE:
-
High-temperature Heat Exchanger
- HPG:
-
High-Pressure Generator
- LAES:
-
Liquid Air Energy Storage
- LHE:
-
Low-temperature Heat Exchanger
- LPG:
-
Low-Pressure Generator
- neRTE:
-
Nominal-Electrical Round Trip Efficiency
- PH:
-
Power and Hot water
- PHC:
-
Power, Hot water and Cooling
- PHH:
-
Power, Hot water and Heating
- abs:
-
Absorber
- amb:
-
Ambient
- ch:
-
Charging process
- com:
-
Compressor
- cool:
-
Cooling capacity
- cry-tur:
-
Cryo-turbine
- dis:
-
Discharging process
- E_RTE:
-
Electrical Round Trip Efficiency
- ex:
-
Excess
- HPG:
-
High-pressure generator
- h-water:
-
Hot water
- LPG:
-
Low-pressure generator
- max:
-
Maximum
- NE_RTE:
-
Nominal-electrical Round Trip Efficiency
- ref:
-
Refrigerant
- s:
-
Isentropic process
- tur:
-
Air turbines
- w:
-
Water
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Acknowledgements
The authors are grateful for the partial support from UK EPSRC Manifest Project under EP/N032888/1, EP/P003605/1, a UK FCO Science & Innovation Network grant (Global Partnerships Fund) and an IGI/IAS Global Challenges Funding (IGI/IAS ID 3041).
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She, X., Zhang, T., Peng, X. et al. Liquid Air Energy Storage for Decentralized Micro Energy Networks with Combined Cooling, Heating, Hot Water and Power Supply. J. Therm. Sci. 30, 1–17 (2021). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11630-020-1396-x
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s11630-020-1396-x