The thermodynamic effect of air storage chamber model on Advanced Adiabatic Compressed Air Energy Storage System

As the penetration of renewable energy sources (RES) into energy market is becoming increasingly evident, it is urgent to deal with the problem of fluctuations of RES. Compressed Air Energy Storage (CAES), as one of energy storage technologies aiming at this problem, has excellent characteristics of energy storage and utilization, but its dependence on fossil fuels makes CAES less attractive. In order to avoid the use of fuels, Advanced Adiabatic Compressed Air Energy Storage (AA-CAES), which is an optimized CAES system, is designed to capture and reuse the compressed air heat. In this paper, four different air storage chamber models are established and the characteristics of charge and discharge process are analyzed based on the theory of thermodynamics. Meanwhile, the thermodynamic effects of different air storage chamber models on AA-CAES system are examined. Results show that the difference of air storage chamber models can result in different characteristics of charge and discharge process which may affect the working stability of AA-CAES system. Besides, the influence degree of the number of stages on system efficiency and other parameters change with air storage chamber models. (C) 2013 Published by Elsevier Ltd.