The technical and economic feasibility of utilizing phase change materials for thermal storage in district heating networks

Thomson, A.; Claudio, Gianfranco

The technical and economic feasibility of utilizing phase change materials for thermal storage in district heating networks

journal contribution

posted on 2018-10-11, 12:52 authored by A. Thomson, Gianfranco ClaudioGianfranco Claudio

This study investigates the feasibility of utilizing phase change materials (PCM) for thermal energy storage (TES) within district heating applications (DHN). The increased storage capacity associated with PCM can increase the contribution from LZC technologies and reduce cycling of plant which in turn can increase lifespan and improve the overall system performance. The results suggest that PCM such as Sodium Acetate Trihydrate can be economically and environmentally feasible when utilized for TES in DHN; however, cost reductions of over 50% to approximately £57/kWh are required to provide financial savings over traditional sensible storage solutions such as pressurised hot water tanks. Air pollution and CO2 emissions can be reduced through the increase in heat pump contribution.

History

School

Mechanical, Electrical and Manufacturing Engineering

Published in

Energy Procedia

Citation

THOMSON, A. and CLAUDIO, G., 2019. The technical and economic feasibility of utilizing phase change materials for thermal storage in district heating networks. Energy Procedia, 159, pp.442-447.

Publisher

Elsevier © The Authors

Version

VoR (Version of Record)

Publisher statement

This work is made available according to the conditions of the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International (CC BY-NC-ND 4.0) licence. Full details of this licence are available at: https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/

Acceptance date

2018-09-10

Publication date

2019-03-15

Notes

This is an open access article under the CC-BY-NC-ND license (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/). This paper was also presented at the Applied Energy Symposium and Forum, Renewable Energy Integration with Mini/Microgrids, REM 2018, 29–30 September 2018, Rhodes, Greece.