Cryogenic energy is the accumulation of excess energy using air liquefaction in cold storage. This new product has already been used in England. In the grid occur daily load changes and here is the liquefaction of atmospheric air in a cryogenic storage plant, made it possible to align the generation of volatile energy sources (wind and gelioelektrostantsii). For over a hundred years as the invented components cryoaccumulator, but only today had the idea to combine them all into one device.
Like the idea of temporarily storing energy, and the installation and operation is very simple. To accumulate the excess of energy the air is cooled to a temperature of -196º. In result of cooling the gases nitrogen and oxygen liquefy, that enables this liquid mixture with minimal losses to upload to the repository. The vault is built on the thermos, it is at atmospheric pressure liquid air can be stored up to 7 days. Further, in the event of a fall the load on the power supply you can use the accumulated liquid air for load balancing. Air from the vault enters the evaporator. In the evaporator, the air expands to 700 times and thereby drives the turbine. This is absolutely not necessary preheating, enough of the small temperature difference that would have been an abrupt release of stored energy of a liquid mixture.
The efficiency and effectiveness of the ideas tested on the experimental setup, the power is 5kW. For large CHP 100 MW cryogenic battery collected the energy that night could be saved with efficiency 50%, and if you use forced heated liquid mixture, the efficiency reaches 70%. And this figure is equal to the efficiency of pumped-storage plants.
Therefore, the entire cycle of cryoaccumulator can be divided into 3 stages:
– Liquefaction of air mixture. Air in the system comes with compressor, thus it needs to be cleaned from various impurities. Dust and other solid impurities remain in the filter to purify air from moisture, CO2 and hydrocarbons, are used two-layer absorbers.
– Storage in the liquid state. Dry and hot air enters a two-stage refrigeration unit, the pre-air mixture under pressure is compressed to 40 ATM. In the cryogenic installation of the air powering the turbine and cools, loses a lot of heat. Further, the air mixture flows at a slow pace in the expansion chamber. As a result, a large part of the air passes into the liquid phase with a temperature of -196º, and that part of the air which remained in a gaseous state, is fed back to the refrigeration unit. Liquid air is stored at atmospheric pressure in criteriaso that have double insulation.
– The release of energy. This process takes about 20 minutes. The release of energy occurs only when it is necessary to align the load in the network. So with the help of powerful pumps the liquid air is pumped from storage and is pumped into the evaporator. Sharp change of temperature leads to the instantly expanding the air. Rapid expansion leads to the work of the turbine, and she, in turn, transmits torque to the gearbox and the generator.
Cryogenic energy has a great future, as the accumulation of excess energy does not require large areas and special landscape as a pumped storage plant. Use this novelty will allow to maintain and to ensure the stable operation unstable sources of energy. Also note the absolute environmental friendliness.
