Innovators from Italy's Magaldi Green Thermal Energy Storage plan to fight planet warming with an unlikely ally: heat.
It's part of a unique method to store intermittent renewable energy using fluidized sand. Fascinatingly, the system has the crucial steps familiar to batteries — charging, storing, and discharging — without the expensive metals needed for power-pack chemistry to work.
The sand collects heat generated from surplus renewable energy, with a heat exchanger to manage the process. A well-insulated tank keeps the sand packs inside hot with little energy loss.
To discharge, the heat exchanger reverses, releasing superheated steam at up to 752 degrees Fahrenheit. The hot air can make electricity by powering a turbine, according to Magaldi and Renewable Energy Magazine.
"Our storage technology can be used in the steam section of existing thermoelectric power plants … or combined cycle gas turbine plants," Letizia Magaldi, Magaldi's executive vice president, said in a 2021 PV Magazine article on the patented tech.
Heat generation is an energy-hogging process. The International Energy Agency reports that dirty energy sources produce much of the thermal energy needed for industrial work and other uses, contributing up to 40% of worldwide heat-trapping carbon dioxide pollution.
Even domestic tasks burn substantial power. About 90% of a washing machine's energy is used to heat the water, for example. If you run a cycle daily, you could save around $250 a year simply by using the cold setting.
Better heat management through thermal storage is being developed elsewhere, too. Experts in Finland are building a facility underground with the goal of storing massive amounts of thermal energy.
Israel's Nostromo is going in the opposite direction by turning sunrays into ice with its unique solar-storage invention. Its IceBrick can cool buildings during the evening, helping to reduce strain on the electrical grid.
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Magaldi's website states that its thermal unit is sustainable, made with silica sand and steel. It doesn't "contain or produce pollutants." It's a flexible system that is able to support the grid, energize power plants, or keep the lights on in industrial settings.
It's also efficient. Heat loss is less than 2% in a 24-hour period. What's more, the thermal power can be stored for days.
"It has been proved that, in the case of a thermal-to-thermal application, the round-trip efficiency is greater than 90%," per Magaldi.
The system is set to become operational this year. The plan, according to Renewable Energy, is for it to be deployed at an Italian IGI food supply plant. The thermal storage unit is predicted to prevent 600 tons of planet-warming carbon pollution a year while operating, all per the story.
If successful, that's a weighty amount of dirty air that will be kept out of the atmosphere. NASA said planet-warming fumes are linked to a laundry list of problems, including an increased risk of severe weather.
"Decarbonization of industrial heat is critical to reach net-zero, and it is technologically possible," Renewable Energy's article states.
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