Abstract
The life cycle assessment of components is becoming increasingly important for planning and construction. In this paper, a novel storage technology for excess electricity consisting of a heat pump, a heat storage and an organic rankine cycle is investigated with regards to its environmental impact. Waste heat is exergetically upgraded, stored in a hot water storage unit and afterwards reconverted to electricity when needed. Such a pilot plant on a lab scale is currently built in Germany. The first part of this paper focuses on geothermal energy as a potential heat source for the storage system and its environmental impact. For a large scale application, geothermal hotspots in Germany are further investigated. The second part analyzes the storage technology itself and compares it to the impacts of commonly used battery storage technologies. Especially during the manufacturing process, significantly better global warming potential values are shown compared to lithium-ion and lead batteries. The least environmental impact while operating the system is with wind power, which suggests an implementation of the storage system into the grid in the northern part of Germany.
Highlights
Due to climate change, the issue of sustainability and environmental impacts is becoming increasingly dominant
An life cycle assessment (LCA) is performed for the entire pumped thermal energy storage system which represents the third contribution in this paper
Since the environmental influences of geothermal energy presented in this paper only represent one possible heat source, these results are not included in the direct comparison between the batteries and the pumped thermal heat storage
Summary
The issue of sustainability and environmental impacts is becoming increasingly dominant. An LCA is performed for the entire pumped thermal energy storage system which represents the third contribution in this paper These results were compared with the environmental impact of lithium ion batteries as well as lead acid batteries. Since the environmental influences of geothermal energy presented in this paper only represent one possible heat source, these results are not included in the direct comparison between the batteries and the pumped thermal heat storage. Both industrial waste heat and solar thermal energy are potential heat sources, which would distort the results of the study if any heat source is included in the comparison
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