THE STORAGE OF COLD - LASTING COOL BREEZE THAT DOES NOT COST THE PLANET

Peter Hou, ANU CECS Solar Thermal Group, peter.hou@anu.edu.au. Supervisor: Mike Dennis
Most of the building cooling systems use grid-supplied electricity, and are designed to meet peak demand. With more buildings built every year, this has put enormous pressure on the electricity supply network. Water and ice are the most commonly used storage media, they are cheap, non-toxic, and compatible with most existing systems which require minimal retrofitting. But liquid water has inherently low energy storage density, which require larger storage to achieve required storage capacity. Ice melts and freezes at 0, meaning the chiller have to work under lower Coefficient of Performance (CoP) when charge the storage. Other studied storage media such as paraffin wax and salt hydrates also have properties limiting their application. Clathrate hydrates is a promising candidate that tick more boxes than other materials as storage media, but has not yet been sufficiently studied.

To Answer the Questions - an Engineering Approach

Computer Simulation: TRNSYS models could developed and
used in evaluating the performance of various thermal storage configurations, to help answer question 1 to 3.
Cold storage

! Solar cooling technologies are promising in terms of reducing ! pressure on the electricity supply network, and cutting ! greenhouse gas emission. However, current systems have little ! capability to handle cooling demand when solar energy is not available (e.g. night time). !

Storage is Natures way of Balancing Supply and Demand.

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Heat Rejection

nd n-hr

It is intuitive to think that the above issues could be addressed by devising a storage of cold as a reservoir of cooling capacity, just like using battery for electricity. In fact, such systems have been commercialized decades ago. However, the technology is still Using Ice July 1 evolving and there are unsolved problems, and fundamental questions to be answered.
Cold storage
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Figure 1: R141b-hydrate produced in Experiment 6

Chiller

Cold storage

Space Cooling

Figure 2: Left: R141-b clathrate hydrate produced at ANU Right: TBAB hydrate slurry produced by JFE Engineering

There are a number of potential integration points for the cold storage, under a given external condition, which one works the best? Experimental Study: Prototyped cold storage will be
studied in details regarding: charging/discharging rate; heat/mass transfer properties; thermal cycling stabilities; chemical stability/corrosivity

Research Questions: 1. When and where do we need cold storage? 2. What is most suitable selection/design?
! "" 3. How assess the value of a cold storage?

4. What is the best cold storage for solar cooling? 5. What are the fundamental properties of gas hydrate complexes, and how could they help in developing cold storage technology?

Figure 1: Ice storage system at a university campus in the U.S.

If things go well, an experimentally tested cold storage module could be integrated with a solar cooling system soon!