Anyone who has ever hot-footed it barefoot across the beach on a sunny day walks away with a greater understanding of just how much heat sand can retain. That ability is expected to play a vital role in the future, as technology involving heated sand becomes part of the answer to energy storage needs.
TES shows promise as a low-cost alternative to existing storage technologies, and storing energy in solid particles such as sand provides a ready answer, without geological restrictions.“Sand is easy to access. It is environmentally friendly. It is stable, quite stable, in a wide temperature range. It is also low cost,” said Zhiwen Ma, a mechanical engineer in the laboratory’s Thermal Energy Systems Group.
In addition to TES, Gifford’s expertise is in computational fluid dynamics. That knowledge is important because the sand needs to flow through the storage device. Other TES media includes concrete and rocks, which can easily retain heat but remain solidly in place. “Your heat transfer is much higher and much quicker and much more effective if you’re moving your media,” Gifford said.
The DOE-funded demonstration project, Ma said, is intended to show the commercial potential of sand for TES. Expanding the amount of energy that can be stored in sand is as simple as adding more sand, said Craig Turchi, manager of the Thermal Energy Science and Technologies Research Group at NREL.
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