Thermochemical Characterizations of Novel Vermiculite-LiCl Composite Sorbents for Low-Temperature Heat Storage

Yannan Zhang, Ruzhu Wang, Tingxian Li and Yanjie Zhao
Additional contact information
Yannan Zhang: Institute of Refrigeration and Cryogenics and Key Laboratory of Power Mechanical Engineering, Ministry of Education of The People’s Republic of China, Shanghai Jiao Tong University, Shanghai 200240, China
Ruzhu Wang: Institute of Refrigeration and Cryogenics and Key Laboratory of Power Mechanical Engineering, Ministry of Education of The People’s Republic of China, Shanghai Jiao Tong University, Shanghai 200240, China
Tingxian Li: Institute of Refrigeration and Cryogenics and Key Laboratory of Power Mechanical Engineering, Ministry of Education of The People’s Republic of China, Shanghai Jiao Tong University, Shanghai 200240, China
Yanjie Zhao: Institute of Refrigeration and Cryogenics and Key Laboratory of Power Mechanical Engineering, Ministry of Education of The People’s Republic of China, Shanghai Jiao Tong University, Shanghai 200240, China

Energies, 2016, vol. 9, issue 10, 1-15

Abstract: To store low-temperature heat below 100 °C, novel composite sorbents were developed by impregnating LiCl into expanded vermiculite (EVM) in this study. Five kinds of composite sorbents were prepared using different salt concentrations, and the optimal sorbent for application was selected by comparing both the sorption characteristics and energy storage density. Textural properties of composite sorbents were obtained by extreme-resolution field emission scanning electron microscopy (ER-SEM) and an automatic mercury porosimeter. After excluding two composite sorbents which would possibly exhibit solution leakage in practical thermal energy storage (TES) system, thermochemical characterizations were implemented through simulative sorption experiments at 30 °C and 60% RH. Analyses of thermogravimetric analysis/differential scanning calorimetry (TGA/DSC) curves indicate that water uptake of EVM/LiCl composite sorbents is divided into three parts: physical adsorption of EVM, chemical adsorption of LiCl crystal, and liquid–gas absorption of LiCl solution. Energy storage potential was evaluated by theoretical calculation based on TGA/DSC curves. Overall, EVMLiCl20 was selected as the optimal composite sorbent with water uptake of 1.41 g/g, mass energy storage density of 1.21 kWh/kg, and volume energy storage density of 171.61 kWh/m 3 .

Keywords: sorbent; expanded vermiculite (EVM); lithium chloride; solution carryover; thermal energy storage (TES) (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: Q Q0 Q4 Q40 Q41 Q42 Q43 Q47 Q48 Q49 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2016
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (13)

Downloads: (external link)
https://www.mdpi.com/1996-1073/9/10/854/pdf (application/pdf)
https://www.mdpi.com/1996-1073/9/10/854/ (text/html)

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:gam:jeners:v:9:y:2016:i:10:p:854-:d:81153

Access Statistics for this article

Energies is currently edited by Ms. Agatha Cao

More articles in Energies from MDPI
Bibliographic data for series maintained by MDPI Indexing Manager ().