Selection of materials with potential in sensible thermal energy storage

Abstract

Thermal energy storage is a technology under investigation since the early 1970s. Since then, numerous new applications have been found and muchwork has been done to bring this technology to the market. Nevertheless, the materials used either for latent or for sensible storage were mostly investigated 30 years ago, and the research has lead to improvement in their performance under different conditions of applications. In those years a significant number of new materials were developed in many fields other than storage and energy, but a great effort to characterize and classify these materials was done. Taking into account the fact that thousands of materials are known and a large number of new materials are developed every year, the authors use the methodology for materials selection developed by Prof. Ash by to give an overview of other materials suitable to be used in thermal energy storage. Sensible heat storage at temperatures between 150 and 200 1C is defined as a case study and two different scenarios were considered: long term sensible heat storage and short term sensible heat storage.

This work was partially funded by the Spanish Government (Project ENE2008-06687-C02-01/CON) and the European Union (COST ActionCOSTTU0802.) The authors would like to thank the Catalan Government for the quality accreditation given to the GREA research group (2009 SGR 534).