Embodied energy and cost of high temperature thermal energy storage systems for use with concentrated solar power plants

Rhys Jacob, Martin Belusko, A. Inés Fernández, Luisa F. Cabeza, Wasim Saman and Frank Bruno

Applied Energy, 2016, vol. 180, issue C, 586-597

Abstract: The intermittency of renewable energy systems remains one of the major hurdles preventing a large scale uptake of these technologies and concentrated solar power (CSP) systems are no different. However, CSP has the benefit of being able to store excess heat using thermal energy storage (TES). For the uptake of CSP with TES it must be demonstrated that the technology is both economically as well as environmentally feasible. This paper aims to investigate the economic and environmental impact of several TES options that are available for CSP systems. The investigated systems include an encapsulated phase change material (PCM) system, a coil-in-tank PCM system and a liquid sodium TES system. The economic impact in the current study refers to the capital cost (CAPEX) of each system including the tank, storage material, encapsulation cost (if applicable) and allowances for construction and engineering. The environmental impact of each system is accounted by calculating the embodied energy of each of the system components. Each storage system will be required to store a comparable amount of energy so that reliable conclusions can be drawn. The results from this analysis conclude that the encapsulated PCM (EPCM) and coil-in-tank system represent an embodied energy of roughly one third of the corresponding state-of-the-art two-tank molten salt system.

Keywords: Embodied energy; Environmental impact; High temperature thermal energy storage (TES) systems; Concentrated solar power (CSP) systems; Phase change materials (PCMs) (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2016
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (22)

Downloads: (external link)
http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S030626191631114X
Full text for ScienceDirect subscribers only

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:eee:appene:v:180:y:2016:i:c:p:586-597

Ordering information: This journal article can be ordered from
http://www.elsevier.com/wps/find/journaldescription.cws_home/405891/bibliographic
http://www.elsevier. ... 405891/bibliographic

DOI: 10.1016/j.apenergy.2016.08.027

Access Statistics for this article

Applied Energy is currently edited by J. Yan

More articles in Applied Energy from Elsevier
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Catherine Liu ().