Thermo-Chemical Heat Storage Systems in Concentrated Solar Power Plants

Solutions developed

The proposed concept combines the demonstrated technologies of ceramic volumetric receivers and structured solar reactors and promotes them one step further to the development of an integrated receiver/reactor/heat exchanger configuration with enhanced heat storage characteristics, through a series of innovations to be implemented concerning new reactor/heat exchanger designs, enhanced incorporation of redox materials in the reactor’s structure, improved redox material compositions and utilization of industrial wastes as raw materials for the oxide redox systems synthesis.

Main results

Beside PCMs and slurries, new approaches for ground heat storage have been carried on within this WP, achieving as results a new geometry ground heat exchanger (GHEX), with enhanced thermal characteristics, a CFM, injected in the soil around the drilling for the improvement of the ground conductivity and reducing soil resistance.