Development and Testing of a Thermo-Chemical Energy Store - Results of a Five-Year Research Project
Abstract
During the five-year research project EnErChem, a new solar heating system has been developed, aiming to supply the demand for space heating of energy efficient buildings completely based on solar thermal energy. Within the research project engineers and material scientists from universities and industry cooperated interdisciplinary. The aim was the further development of a concept of efficient long term heat storage based on improved storage materials. Composite storage materials based on the combination of hygroscopic salts and zeolite granulates have been developed. To fully use the properties of the developed storage materials a robust reactor design has been developed. Based on this design a prototype store has been built and experimentally investigated in a “hardware in the loop” (HIL) test environment. The developed design of the thermal energy store and the experimental results of the thermal energy store operation are presented in this paper.