Abstract
Energy storage systems are increasingly gaining importance with regard to their role in achieving load levelling, especially for matching intermittent sources of renewable energy with customer demand, as well as for storing excess nuclear or thermal power during the daily cycle. Compressed air energy storage (CAES), with its high reliability, economic feasibility, and low environmental impact, is a promising method for large-scale energy storage. Although there are only two large-scale CAES plants in existence, recently, a number of CAES projects have been initiated around the world, and some innovative concepts of CAES have been proposed. Existing CAES plants have some disadvantages such as energy loss due to dissipation of heat of compression, use of fossil fuels, and dependence on geological formations. This paper reviews the main drawbacks of the existing CAES systems and presents some innovative concepts of CAES, such as adiabatic CAES, isothermal CAES, micro-CAES combined with air-cycle heating and cooling, and constant-pressure CAES combined with pumped hydro storage that can address such problems and widen the scope of CAES applications, by energy and exergy analyses. These analyses greatly help us to understand the characteristics of each CAES system and compare different CAES systems.
Highlights
Interest in energy storage is currently on the rise, especially for storage that matches intermittent renewable energy with customer demand, as well as for storage of excess nuclear or thermal power during a daily cycle [1]
This paper reviews the main drawbacks of the existing compressed air energy storage (CAES) systems and the advantages of innovative CAES concepts such as adiabatic CAES, isothermal CAES, micro-CAES combined with air-cycle heating and cooling, and constant-pressure CAES combined with pumped hydro storage by energy and exergy analyses
The adiabatic CAES can be considered a combination of CAES and thermal energy storage (TES), because a substantial portion of the exergy is stored in the form of thermal energy
Summary
Interest in energy storage is currently on the rise, especially for storage that matches intermittent renewable energy with customer demand, as well as for storage of excess nuclear or thermal power during a daily cycle [1]. The existing CAES plants have some disadvantages such as their energy loss due to dissipation of heat of compression, use of fossil fuels, and dependence on geological formations. This paper reviews the main drawbacks of the existing CAES systems and the advantages of innovative CAES concepts such as adiabatic CAES, isothermal CAES, micro-CAES combined with air-cycle heating and cooling, and constant-pressure CAES combined with pumped hydro storage by energy and exergy analyses. These analyses greatly help us to understand the characteristics of each.
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