SBIR Phase I: Grid-scale electricity storage from waste heat

小型企业创新研究(SBIR)项目的更广泛的影响/商业潜力是显著降低成本并扩大冰热能储存的潜在市场数量。具有成本效益的能源储存对于可持续的未来是必不可少的。存储可以从间歇性可再生能源提供可靠的电力访问，提高电网对天气事件或恐怖袭击的弹性，并提高现有资产的利用效率，推迟昂贵的升级。今天，冰蓄冷系统帮助建筑物所有者将制冷负荷从昂贵的高峰时段转移到电力较便宜的时候。不幸的是，这些系统的前期成本，受用于制冰的冷却盘管的巨大成本推动，阻碍了许多用户的采用，并不适当地限制了冰蓄热的可寻址市场的数量。消除冷却盘管上的结冰将减小盘管的尺寸，更重要的是显著降低这些系统的成本。低成本的冰蓄热可以极大地提高抽水蓄能等长期蓄能技术的经济性。这个SBIR第一阶段项目建议将发现零冰粘附面转化为冷却盘管，可以集成到一个正常运行的冰蓄能系统中。为了抵御冰层，这些表面需要完全浸没在不混溶的油相中，这使得线圈的几何形状和整个系统的开发具有挑战性。在该项目开始时，将对各种板式和管式冷却盘管的几何形状进行系统的原型制作和改进，以测量冻结和融化的换热效率。不同配方的表面涂层也将进行测试。最有希望的候选几何形状将在多个循环中充电和放电，作为冰热能存储系统的一部分。循环的结果将与传统的冰盘管技术进行比较，使用的指标包括能量密度和热效率。除冰冷却盘管的尺寸不到冰盘管系统的三分之一，预计将提供更好的冷却性能。在一个正常运行的冰蓄能系统中展示一个冰剥落冷却盘管将证明这项技术？S已经做好了扩展的准备。该奖项反映了美国国家科学基金会的法定使命，并通过使用基金会的智力优势和更广泛的影响审查标准进行评估，被认为值得支持。

The broader impact/commercial potential of this Small Business Innovation Research (SBIR) project is to significantly lower the cost and expand the number of addressable markets for ice thermal energy storage. Cost effectively storing energy is imperative to a sustainable future. Storage can provide reliable access to power from intermittent renewable sources, increase the resiliency of the grid to weather events or terrorist attacks, and increase the utilization efficiency of existing assets, deferring costly upgrades. Today, ice thermal storage systems help building owners shift cooling loads from costly peak hours to when electricity is less expensive. Unfortunately the upfront cost of these systems, driven by the large cost of the cooling coil used to generate ice, prevents adoption from many users and has unduly restricted the number of addressable markets for ice thermal storage. Elimination of ice buildup on the cooling coil would reduce the size of the coil, and more importantly significantly lower the cost of these systems. Low-cost ice thermal energy storage could greatly improve the economics for long-duration energy storage technologies such as pumped thermal energy storage.This SBIR Phase I project proposes to translate the discovery of surfaces with zero ice adhesion into a cooling coil that can be integrated into a functioning ice thermal energy storage system. In order to repel ice, these surfaces require complete submersion in an immiscible oil phase, making coil geometry and overall system development challenging. At the beginning of this project, various plate and tube based cooling coil geometries will be systematically prototyped and refined, measuring the freezing and melting heat transfer efficiencies. Different formulations of the surface coating will be tested as well. The most promising candidate geometries will be charged and discharged over multiple cycles as part of an ice thermal energy storage system. The results from cycling will be compared to conventional ice-on-coil technology using metrics such as energy density and heat transfer efficiency. An ice shedding cooling coil, at less than a third of the size of an ice-on-coil system, is expected to deliver improved cooling performance. Demonstration of an ice shedding cooling coil in a functioning ice thermal energy storage system will prove the technology?s readiness to scale.This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.