Zhongchu Guoneng Technology Co., Ltd. (ZCGN) has switched on the world's largest compressed air energy storage project in China. The $207.8 million energy storage power station has a capacity of 300 MW/1,800 MWh and uses an underground salt cave.
  • threelonmusketeersEnglish
    1·
    6 months ago

    If I remember my thermodynamics correctly, compression and expansion of a gas is a fully reversible process. Energy lost as heat during compression can be (in theory) regained during expansion.

    In practice, achieving high efficiency with this form of energy storage would require compressing and expanding the gas very slowly, to minimize the temperature differential. This is not great if the energy storage is intended for high power applications.

    I think compressed air “batteries” will always come with a fundamental trade off between charging efficiency (energy in/energy out) vs maximum power (Watts). Whether the low cost of storage (big empty tank/cavern) is enough to make this competitive, I do not know…

    • Captain AggravatedEnglish
      1·
      6 months ago

      Yeah the gas laws like to say things like “an ideal gas in a closed system.” Storing energy by compressing gas, using the gas basically as a spring, is trying to take advantage of Boyle’s law, while trying not to run afoul of Charles’ law. Take a parcel of room temperature air and compress it. The total amount of heat energy remains the same, but the temperature skyrockets. Because of a temperature gradient, some of the heat energy will pass into the compressor machinery, the walls of the air tank, any pipes and hoses etc. and radiate into the environment, so that when the gas is allowed to expand to ambient pressure again it absorbs heat to do so, imparting less energy to any pneumatic motor it is expanded in than went into compressing it.

      An insulated tank might help mitigate that but for the sake of the bearings and packings I’d suggest against insulating the compressor cylinder.