High Temperature Heat Storage

Abstract

The importance of high temperature thermal energy storage needs hardly any emphasis. The intermittent nature of sun’s energy, importance to the central receiver solar thermal power system programs, and growing needs of energy in industries have necessiated the development of high temperature thermal storage systems. Development of practical but low cost methods for storing large amounts of high temperature thermal energy for solar thermal conversion to electric power is one of the most important subsystems. Solar thermal energy subsystem is one of the least well-developed system required for a solar electric power plant. Solar collector technology is well developed and is related to antenna technology, receiver technology is also well understood and related to steam boiler technology, and the turbine-generator technology is in use in Industries for the last many years. Since storage subsystem technology has no analogy in industry, therefore, not much work has been done in this direction. Since 1975 when the central receiver solar thermal power system came into operation, Department of Energy (DOE) of USA has given several contracts to industries and institutions for the development of large amount of high temperature energy storage systems. Several review articles (Ref. 1 to 5) are recently written showing the importance, describing various thermal energy high temperature storage systems and the research required in this important area of thermal energy storage.