Thermochemical heat storage - system design issues

Thermochemical materials (TCMs) are a promising solution for seasonal heat storage, providing the possibility to store excess solar energy from the warm season for later use during the cold season, and with that all year long sustainable energy. With our fixed bed, vacuum reactors using zeolite as TCM, we recently demonstrated long-term heat storage with satisfactory output power. For domestic application, however, it will be necessary to considerably increase storage density and to reduce system costs. In this paper, we discuss issues on system, component and material levels for realizing a commercially attractive system. We first discuss a modular, fixed bed concept with a hot water storage. We show that with proper dimensioning of TCM modules and hot water storage, one can obtain a system where daily storage and on-demand heat delivery can be arranged by the hot water storage, while demands on output power, power control and material stability during operation are relaxed as much as possible. We also discuss atmospheric and central reactor concepts, which may provide lower-cost TCS systems. An important issue on component level is the implementation of a low temperature source providing evaporation heat in winter. We discuss several options, including the application of solar collectors in winter. Heat storage density can be increased by an order of magnitude by applying hydration reactions of hygroscopic salts, but this introduces physical and chemical stability issues during repeated cycles of hydration and dehydration. We discuss several of these stability issues as well as possible stabilization in a composite TCM, which should also provide sufficient vapor and heat transport. (C) 2014 The Authors. Published by Elsevier Ltd.