Heating is responsible for nearly 50% of the world’s energy consumption. However, the sun provides sufficient amount of heat in the form of solar energy. In addition to this, waste heat is produced from industries in significant amounts. The ability to store heat therefore has great potential to help balance the demand and supply of energy across the globe.
Using Sorption Heat Pumps to Store Thermal Energy
Harnessing the intrinsic thermodynamic properties of adsorption and absorption processes may result in the generation of effective thermal energy storage such as sorption heat pumps. Two specific types of sorption heat pumps are those which use hydrogen absorption in metals, and water adsorption on porous materials. In both cases, storage of heat results from driving the endothermic process (desorption). This stored energy may be released at a specific point in the future by allowing the corresponding exothermic process (re-adsorption or re-absorption) to occur.
Water adsorption on porous materials is an important technique, as it avoids heat losses, provides high theoretical heat storage densities and presents fewer material degradation and corrosion issues. Relevant parameters include cyclic stability, enthalpy of adsorption, and water uptake capacity. When heat is required quickly, it is necessary that adsorption kinetics are suitably rapid to deliver the desired heat flow. For this purpose, materials like aluminophosphates, MOFs and zeolites are considered.
Similarly, hydrogen stores do not have any moving components, and the materials are entirely solid or gas phase and the adsorption properties are easily tailored. The energy density is higher than for porous materials; however compatibility issues of the materials need to be taken into account for this method.
Hiden Isochema's Solution
In order to evaluate the performance of a material or systems for thermochemical energy storage applications in the form of sorption heat pumps there is a need to measure the kinetics and thermodynamics of absorption and adsorption processes. The range of gas and vapor sorption analyzers from Hiden Isochema is ideally suited to make these measurements. The measurement of water sorption isotherms and kinetics on porous materials over an extensive range of temperatures can be carried out using IGAsorp series gravimetric water sorption analyzers. The IGA-002 and IGA-100 gravimetric sorption analyzers, allow both vapor and gas sorption measurements in one instrument. The IMI-HTP is used to perform hydrogen sorption measurements of up to 200 bar, and is therefore suitable for characterizing hydride- based hydrogen stores for thermochemical energy storage.
This information has been sourced, reviewed and adapted from materials provided by Hiden Isochema.
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