An Adsorption-Compression Cold Thermal Energy Storage System (ACCESS)

制冷行业目前消耗了英国约14%的电力，排放了英国约10%的温室气体。据预测，到2050年，全球仅空间制冷的电力需求就将增加两倍。此外，随着空气温度的增加，制冷需求增加，但冰箱的性能系数降低。这导致冰箱的有效操作与一天内的峰值冷却需求之间的时间不匹配。显然，这一问题在未来几十年将恶化。事实上，UKERC最近的研究报告称，到2050年，英国的制冷行业将对电网产生7 GW的峰值电力需求。一种解决方案是采用冷热能储存，其允许更灵活的制冷操作，从而导致制冷效率提高和峰值功率需求降低。大规模部署冷热能储存可以大大降低这一峰值需求，减轻其对电网的影响。此外，由于网络限制，英国削减了大量的风力发电。例如，于二零二零年，75%的日数合共削减超过3. 6太瓦时的风能。因此，通过平抑能源需求，冷储能技术提供了一种利用非高峰期风电为冷储能充电的手段，以满足白天高峰期的供冷需求。 该项目基于所提出的新型吸附-压缩热力学循环，旨在开发一种创新的混合技术，用于在零度以下的温度下进行制冷和冷热能储存。由此产生的冷热能存储系统完全集成在冰箱内，并且可能具有比当前技术显著更高的功率密度和能量密度，为大规模冷热能存储提供了颠覆性的新解决方案。开发的技术可以利用非高峰或削减的电力来削减大型制冷厂和区域冷却网络的峰值电力需求，从而减轻冷却行业对电网的影响，并降低运营成本。

The cooling sector currently consumes around 14% of the UK's electricity and emits around 10% of the UK's greenhouse gases. Global electricity demand for space cooling alone is forecast to triple by 2050. Moreover, as air temperature increases, the cooling demand increases, but a refrigerator's Coefficient of Performance decreases. This results in a time mismatch between a refrigerator's efficient operation and peak cooling demand over a day. Clearly, this problem will deteriorate over the coming decades. Indeed, research by UKERC recently reported that cooling sector will cause a 7 GW peak power demand to the grid by 2050 in the UK. A solution is to employ cold thermal energy storage, which allows much more flexible refrigeration operation, thereby resulting in improved refrigeration efficiency and reduced peak power demand. Large-scale deployment of cold thermal energy storage could dramatically reduce this peak demand, mitigating its impact to the grid. Moreover, the UK curtails large amounts of wind power due to network constraints. For example, over 3.6TWh of wind energy in total was curtailed on 75% of days in 2020. Therefore, through flattening energy demand, cold thermal energy storage technology provides a means to use off-peak wind power to charge cold thermal energy storage for peak daytime cooling demand. This project, based on the proposed novel adsorption-compression thermodynamic cycle, aims to develop an innovative hybrid technology for both refrigeration and cold thermal energy storage at sub-zero temperatures. The resultant cold thermal energy storage system is fully integrated within the refrigerator and potentially has significantly higher power density and energy density than current technologies, providing a disruptive new solution for large scale cold thermal energy storage. The developed technology can utilise off-peak or curtailed electricity to shave the peak power demand of large refrigeration plants and district cooling networks, and thus mitigates the impacts of the cooling sector on the grid and also reduces operational costs.