Study on Seasonal and Short-Term Thermal Energy Storage Using a Phase Change Material Emulsion for District Heating Applications
Abstract
Thermal energy storage systems are necessary to increase the flexibility and the share of renewable energy sources in district heating systems. The use of latent heat storage materials (PCM) can reduce the volume of the storage and at the same time the storage temperature needed for a given heat storage. This work studies since a technical viewpoint the potential application of Thermal Energy Storage using “low cost” emulsion of latent heat storage material in district heating for: central heat storage in Solar District Heating systems (seasonal) and de-centralized heat storage (short-term). Results obtained for the seasonal application showed slight improvement achieved by the latent heat storage system using the selected “low-cost” PCM emulsion. On the other hand, the de-centralized TES unit using the PCM emulsions integrated into the DH grid increased the thermal performance and allowed the connection of additional buildings in a saturated grid.