Author, as appears in the article.: Miró L; Oró E; Boer D; Cabeza LF
Department: Enginyeria Mecànica
URV's Author/s: Boer, Dieter-Thomas
Keywords: Thermal energy Storage (materials) Solar power Solar energy Renewable resource Renewable electricity Power-plants Life-cycle assessment High temperature thermal energy storages High temperature thermal energy storage (tes) systems High temperature thermal energy storage High temperature concretes High temperature applications High temperature Heat storage Fused salts Feasible solution Environmental impact study Environmental impact Embodied energy Electrical power Electric energy storage Economics Demand-side management Concrete mixtures Concrete Concentrated solar power (tes) systems
Abstract: Currently, there is an increasing interest in concentrated solar power (CSP) plants as alternative to produce renewable electricity at large scale by using mirrors to concentrate the solar energy and to convert it into high temperature heat. These facilities can be combined with thermal energy storage (TES) systems, which are, nowadays, one of the most feasible solutions in facing the challenge of the intermittent energy supply and demand. However, they are still in research process and, for that, there is a lack of environmental impact studies of these TES systems complementing solar plants. This paper accounts the environmental impact of three TES systems used nowadays in high temperature applications for CSP plants: first, a system which stores sensible heat in high temperature concrete; second, a system storing sensible heat in molten salts; and third, another system with molten salts but storing latent heat. All the systems are normalised in order to be comparable between them due to its initial storage capacity difference. The environmental impact is accounted by calculating the amount of embodied energy in the components of the different TES systems. Notice that embodied energy refers to the total energy inputs required to make a component. Between the three systems, the sensible heat system using concrete as storage material is the one with less environmental impact while the molten salts and PCM have a higher value of embodied energy, mainly due to the nitrate mixture used as storage material. Finally, advantages and disadvantages of the method proposed used are discussed. © 2014 Elsevier Ltd.
Thematic Areas: Renewable energy, sustainability and the environment Química Nuclear energy and engineering Mechanical engineering Materiais Matemática / probabilidade e estatística Management, monitoring, policy and law Interdisciplinar Geociências General energy Fuel technology Farmacia Engineering, chemical Engenharias iv Engenharias iii Engenharias ii Engenharias i Energy engineering and power technology Energy (miscellaneous) Energy (all) Energy & fuels Economia Civil and structural engineering Ciências biológicas iii Ciências biológicas i Ciências ambientais Ciências agrárias i Ciência de alimentos Ciência da computação Building and construction Biotecnología Biodiversidade Arquitetura, urbanismo e design
licence for use: https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/es/
Author's mail: dieter.boer@urv.cat
Author identifier: 0000-0002-5532-6409
Record's date: 2024-09-07
Papper version: info:eu-repo/semantics/acceptedVersion
Link to the original source: https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S0306261914006448?via%3Dihub
Licence document URL: https://repositori.urv.cat/ca/proteccio-de-dades/
Papper original source: Applied Energy. 137 793-799
APA: Miró L; Oró E; Boer D; Cabeza LF (2015). Embodied energy in thermal energy storage (TES) systems for high temperature applications. Applied Energy, 137(), 793-799. DOI: 10.1016/j.apenergy.2014.06.062
Article's DOI: 10.1016/j.apenergy.2014.06.062
Entity: Universitat Rovira i Virgili
Journal publication year: 2015
Publication Type: Journal Publications