4 ms·

Why not exactly? Is basically decent heat storage and transfer with fairly low losses and minimal decay. Silos of these seem perfect for solar. Admittedly the

by ktizo 14y ago

Why not exactly? Is basically decent heat storage and transfer with fairly low losses and minimal decay. Silos of these seem perfect for solar. Admittedly the big question, if you were going to rely on it, is whether there is enough zeolite globally to scale to the terawatt-hour range.

ChuckMcM 14y ago
Not exactly because it doesn't change the design space of CSP, it just offers up a different heat storage mechanism. To put it differently, if heat storage was the only problem with CSP, and there is already a heat storage solution available (liquid salt) then Zeolite isn't solving a known 'problem'. You don't need 'indefinite' heat storage for CSP, you really only need a couple of days worth, and we have that already. It might be interesting to look at the total economic cost of heating these things up in one place, transporting them, and then generating power there. However the heat capacity, even at 4x that of water, means that you've a constant stream of train cars dumping 'charged' pellets into your power plant. While another constant stream is carrying 'spent' pellets back to be recharged. Not to mention that for all of this to work you need to adsorb water so you end up effectively pumping water in the return path. In a CSP setup without a lot of water (say in the desert) this means you need some sort of vapor recovery mechanism to minimize the loss of water.
- ktizo 14y ago
  Was thinking of it more as an urban/industrial thing. Makes sense if you have to do power storage with this technology to do a lot of it at the street level if you can, rather than on the power generation site, as it gives you multiple redundancy and you have to supply cities with water anyway. So when you have excess electrical power you dry pellets. When you want power you give them water vapour which then gives you heat, which can give you motive power from heat engines, and from that electricity from induction generators. All three of which are needed in a typical urban environment, so you are not having to convert all the way back to electric for a large percentage of the power used. Now I know that this is not by any stretch the most thermodynamically efficient arrangement, but I suspect that it could be a relatively cheap and very robust approach that could store a hell of a lot of energy in a widely distributed network. [edit] looked into this a bit, and the temperature rise you tend to be able to achieve from adsorption in zeolite is not going to be enough to do anything much more than direct heating, from what I can find. On reflection, that should have been fairly obvious. Sulk. ;) http://engineering.ucsb.edu/~yuen/references/ref-2.pdf http://engineering.ucsb.edu/~yuen/references/ref-2.pdf
  - ChuckMcM 14y ago
    No need to sulk :-) there are fun things you can do. So lets say you have this huuuuuge pile of zeolite, you put it in your back yard during the summer and dry it out, then you store it in your shed during the winter and use it to warm the house rather than gas, or wood, or electicity. Many climes are wet during the winter and dry during the summer so this works out well for the adsorbtion requirements, and you don't get the air quality guys on your case for burning wood in the winter time. That is a difference if these things can hold their energy potential for the 9 months between summer and winter.
    - ktizo 14y ago
      No need to sulk I know, but I want there to be cool things that solve everything. And anyways, sometimes I enjoy sulking. Now excuse me while I go gather a huuuuuge pile of zeolite. :)

by ktizo 14y ago

ChuckMcM 14y ago

Not exactly because it doesn't change the design space of CSP, it just offers up a different heat storage mechanism. To put it differently, if heat storage was the only problem with CSP, and there is already a heat storage solution available (liquid salt) then Zeolite isn't solving a known 'problem'. You don't need 'indefinite' heat storage for CSP, you really only need a couple of days worth, and we have that already. It might be interesting to look at the total economic cost of heating these things up in one place, transporting them, and then generating power there. However the heat capacity, even at 4x that of water, means that you've a constant stream of train cars dumping 'charged' pellets into your power plant. While another constant stream is carrying 'spent' pellets back to be recharged. Not to mention that for all of this to work you need to adsorb water so you end up effectively pumping water in the return path. In a CSP setup without a lot of water (say in the desert) this means you need some sort of vapor recovery mechanism to minimize the loss of water.

ktizo 14y ago
Was thinking of it more as an urban/industrial thing. Makes sense if you have to do power storage with this technology to do a lot of it at the street level if you can, rather than on the power generation site, as it gives you multiple redundancy and you have to supply cities with water anyway. So when you have excess electrical power you dry pellets. When you want power you give them water vapour which then gives you heat, which can give you motive power from heat engines, and from that electricity from induction generators. All three of which are needed in a typical urban environment, so you are not having to convert all the way back to electric for a large percentage of the power used. Now I know that this is not by any stretch the most thermodynamically efficient arrangement, but I suspect that it could be a relatively cheap and very robust approach that could store a hell of a lot of energy in a widely distributed network. [edit] looked into this a bit, and the temperature rise you tend to be able to achieve from adsorption in zeolite is not going to be enough to do anything much more than direct heating, from what I can find. On reflection, that should have been fairly obvious. Sulk. ;) http://engineering.ucsb.edu/~yuen/references/ref-2.pdf http://engineering.ucsb.edu/~yuen/references/ref-2.pdf
- ChuckMcM 14y ago
  No need to sulk :-) there are fun things you can do. So lets say you have this huuuuuge pile of zeolite, you put it in your back yard during the summer and dry it out, then you store it in your shed during the winter and use it to warm the house rather than gas, or wood, or electicity. Many climes are wet during the winter and dry during the summer so this works out well for the adsorbtion requirements, and you don't get the air quality guys on your case for burning wood in the winter time. That is a difference if these things can hold their energy potential for the 9 months between summer and winter.
  - ktizo 14y ago
    No need to sulk I know, but I want there to be cool things that solve everything. And anyways, sometimes I enjoy sulking. Now excuse me while I go gather a huuuuuge pile of zeolite. :)