A Study of a Solar-Thermochemical Energy Transport System for the Pacific Northwest

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If solar energy is to make a significant contribution to the national energy economy, it must displace the use of fossil fuels to supply process heat to the industrial sector. Industry generally uses high temperature steam in the range 200-700 oC1. Temperatures in this range can be attained with ease in a concentrating solar facility. But most industrial users of process heat are not located in a climate of reliable solar flux. It is a major challenge to efficiently store and deliver the high temperature thermal energy from the solar concentrator to the point of use. If the high temperature energy available in the solar concentrator were used as the process heat for an endothermic reaction between gases, then the solar energy would be stored in the products of the reaction. The gaseous products then could be transported at ambient temperatures in a conventional pipeline hundreds of kilometers to the industrial user, where energy could be recovered in the reverse, exothermic reaction. Such a system is known as a thermochemical pipe, or chemical heat pipe. This research planning grant will examine the technical and economic feasibility of a chemical heat pipe system. The design of a reactor-receiver system that decouples the absorption of the solar energy from the chemical reaction of interest will be considered.