Low-cost thermal battery
When you think about humanity’s impact on the climate, images of airplane and car exhaust fumes may spring to mind. Yet aviation and cars only account for 2% and 6% of global carbon emissions, respectively.
Another sector — which hardly anyone ever talks about — has higher emissions than both of these put together, accounting for 10% of our planet's greenhouse gases: industrial heat.
The high temperatures that heavy industry requires to produce steel, aluminium, concrete, cement, glass and other important resources are mainly derived from burning fossil fuels — often carbon-rich coke or coal.
And huge amounts of this heat energy — not to mention the heat generated from sources such as conventional power plants — are simply wasted on a daily basis.
If this heat was captured, stored and re-used when required, it could massively improve energy efficiency, cutting both costs and emissions across a wide range of industries.
Norwegian start-up EnergyNest has produced a new type of modular thermal battery able to store waste heat for hours, days or even weeks with minimal losses. With a levelised cost of storage said to be as low as €15 ($17.60) per MWh for large projects — up to 47 times cheaper than utility-scale lithium-ion storage — it is little wonder that the start-up has already inked deals with the likes of Siemens, EDF and Eni.
And even if heavy industry replaces the fossil fuels used to generate high-temperature heat with cleaner alternatives — such as hydrogen or renewables-powered electric arc furnaces — companies would still cut their heating costs by reducing and recirculating their waste heat. [...]
 |
Read the whole article on: https://www.rechargenews.com/transition/why-a-low-cost-thermal-battery-could-become-the-swiss-army-knife-of-emissions-reductions/2-1-853168
Commenti
Posta un commento