Power generation by integrating a thermally regenerative electrochemical cycle (TREC) with a solar pond and underground heat exchanger

Abstract

A new system to generate electric power by integrating a thermal regenerative electrochemical cycle (TREC) with a solar pond and underground heat exchanger is proposed. Thus far, there are relatively limited available studies in the literature about integrating TREC with renewable thermal systems. To the best of the authors’ knowledge, this work is a first attempt to investigate the integration of TREC with solar ponds. The solar pond serves two purposes: It is the hot driving source for operating the TREC power system and an energy storage medium to maintain, sustain, and stabilize its performance. The underground heat exchanger serves similar purposes as well but as the cold thermal sink. The novelty of the proposed system is in being a stable and sustainable electric power generator because of having low-cost hot and cold reservoirs that serve as the source and sink of thermal energy and storage domains. A theoretical model has been initially proposed and validated by verifying its predictions with published experimental results. The model is utilized to describe, investigate, and understand the performance of the integrated system. The most critical parameters that affect the performance of the integrated system have been detected and tracked.