Building Blocks for Energy Storage: MGA Thermal tour
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- Опубликовано: 19 июн 2024
- Thermal energy storage is one of the hot technologies of the energy transition. In today’s video, we’re going to see a take on this from MGA Thermal, who I visited a few months ago when I was in Newcastle and got a tour of their new pilot facility that they're in the process of putting together. I found out about the technology, the manufacturing process and applications and scale up plans.
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Bookmarks:
00:00 Intro
02:09 What are MGAs?
02:59 How do MGAs work?
05:34 Applications for MGA’s technology
06:38 Power, Duration and Efficiencies
10:00 Repurposing coal power plants
10:53 Cost and lifetime expectancies of the bricks
12:35 MGA Thermal’s Scale-up Plans
13:04 Rosie’s thoughts on MGA Thermal’s technology and timeline
14:03 Outro
Sources:
MGA Thermal
mgathermal.com/
Engineering with Rosie - Thermal Energy Storage Tour with Stiesdal Gridscale Battery
• Thermal Energy Storage...
Engineering with Rosie - Zero-Emissions Heating Options with Glen Ryan
• Zero-Emissions Heating...
MMGA Thermal Scientific Paper
Sugo et al 2013 - Miscibility gap alloys with inverse microstructures and high thermal conductivity for high energy density thermal storage applications
doi.org/10.1016/j.applthermal... 
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Dang! Rosie hitting them woth the real questions! Lifecycle analysis, recycling, efficiency, scalability, material sourcing, industrial level interest, how they are doing their cost calculations, small scale vs large scale costs, love it! Keep it up!
I second this comment! Too many times I’ve seen interviewers shy away from asking tough questions about the technology they’re reporting on. Rosie went directly at the question of efficiency without hesitation. This tech sounds like another great way of storing energy short-term in order to shift to meet demand peaks. Great job, I’ve subscribed!
This is the biggest reason why I like her so much. It takes an engineer, someone who has actually designed and built things, to know what questions need to be asked and whether or not the answers make sense. (Face it, you will never get a single watt of power out of a drawing.) People like me depend on people like her to understand things correctly.
You can see her focus when doing the interview... she's working for the people!
I was pleased to see the issue of low efficiency when used to replace a boiler in a conventional power station was addressed. As the CTO said, depending on the price of power, the low round-trip efficiency may still make sense. A good video.
Great work as always! After speaking with a somewhat similar company (Rondo Energy) it opened my eyes to the world of industrial heating needs. I asked them at the time about phase change materials (PCM), due to the high specific heat capacity available, but they said it was less suited to their applications due to the higher temperatures they operate at (1000K +). Really interesting to see a company combining the advantages of bricks and PCMs!
I am interested to see what portion of MGA's use cases will be for electrical vs thermal power output - Rondo were very focused on thermal output (mainly for cement), but I guess if the renewable power is really surplus to requirement this cheap 30% storage efficiency can make sense. It just strikes me that we are better off trying to load shift applications where possible, but I always welcome as many solutions to a problem as possible at the end of the day! The direct use of heat is also just very satisfying due to the cheap 95%+ round trip efficiencies it offers!
Thanks for reminding the name of the other company I'd heard about doing this.
Glad to see you confirm my memory that their output temperatures were sufficient for cement production.
Another similar and positive-looking company might be Kraftblock.
Excellent comment. I'm so glad people are becoming more aware of Phase Change Materials (PCM) and how the principle of "Latent Heat of Fusion" of certain materials can be used to store and release tremendous amounts of energy. Using Aluminum as a PCM is a great choice in this application as it will absorb nearly 400kJ/kg when it melts then return that energy as it solidifies (although I believe MGA is using an Al-Si alloy which depending upon the mix ratios can store between 562kJ/kg and 960kJ/kg). Metals can store tremendous amounts of heat when melted, Beryllium for instance can store 1356kJ/kg. Melt temperatures however these metals make it difficult for DIY people to tinker with them at home for capturing solar or waste heat applications.
Some PCM's that might work for home projects might be Wax, Glycerol, PEG 3350, Sodium Acetate Trihydrate (used in hand warmers), Calcium Chloride, etc..
Good points. I suspect you meant 1000ﾟC rather than Kelvin because MGA is already operating at 750ﾟC (1023 K).
I think it's important to emphasize the electricity to heat cycle rather than electricity to electricity round trip.
Vast quantities of gas and coal are used for industrial heating. It's not necessary to convert it back to electricity for this to reduce carbon emissions and enable the switch to intermittent renewables.
For this task it is far, far superior to battery electric storage.
If it also manages to be competitive for the round trip, that is a bonus, but not at all necessary for this to succeed.
I would say it depends on your electricity source. If you're making it yourself and storing it, the marginal cost of that stored energy is zero (excluding the opportunity cost lost of say selling it back to grid for peanuts). You put that electricity back into a heat pump and you could get somewhere between 3x and 5x back in heat on that energy captured.
Oh this is amazing!!! Lots of houses use significant portion of their energy for heating, so even without conversion back to electricity, this would make a lot of sense. Great to see a scalable technology, too. More power to them :)
Yes, but this is inefficient. You have to spend relatively expensive electricity to convert it into heat. Then this heat is not to lose, 2% a day losses are too optimistic. It's better to spend your electricity for heat pumps.
@@stolz999 This is only true for electricity from fossil fuels. With solar, formexample, it generates a lot even when there is limited demand, so you can just waste it or, like in this case, heat something that you will be able to use it later. The choice is clear. Sure, burning gas to heat some thermal storage is not the topic here.
@@stolz999 I think that combining the storage and a heat pump would be a good
fit to space heating in residential units.You would store heat at off peak and retrieve it when
needed with the heat pump @ 3-5x cop for low grade heat for space heating.This could also
supply domestic hot water using the same heat pump at high efficiency.
These units could be fairly compact due to the relatively small amount of storage needed.
@@firstbigbarney I think a problem with using this with heat pumps is the temperature 750ºc . I don't think you are going to go from 10º c to 750ºc with a heat pump. And if the ground temperature is above 10ºc what does a house need heat for?
Especially if we combined this with New Urban design, we could provide the heating needs for whole neighbourhoods.
Here in the UK we have had night storage heaters for many decades. They are concrete blocks mounted on the wall in each room. They heat with restive electricity during the night using the excess grid power. They are generally not great as the heat given off doesn't last all day.
If all the blocks were stored underground surrounded by very good insulation and water pipes transferring the heat from the bricks to radiators in each room it would work much better.
Combined with roof solar then block could recharge some during peek sunlight and then again at cheap night rate. If the heat.is not needed.during the day the bricks will retain more heat as they will be in one large unit with better I solutions. So for the times after work/evening there is a good chance you'll have enough heat, say 5pm to 10pm.
"If all the blocks were stored underground surrounded by very good insulation and water pipes transferring the heat from the bricks to radiators in each room it would work much better."
And cost at least 10x as much to install. You could already put a large water tank in your loft (provided you make it structurally sound) and plumb it in to your radiators. Charge it with heat using electricity at the cheaper night rate.
There's a reason nobody does this - it makes no economic sense whatsoever. The payback time would likely be well into the multiple decades. So storage heaters offer the best bang for buck for those with limited funds.
Anyone with more money would likely just install a heat pump.
@@mentality-monster Water does not store enough heat in it's limited to about 85-90c due to
off gasing, These solid materials and pcm's are better due to their high specific heat and the pcm's
due to the phase change release of energy.They do not have to go to extreme temperatures to
be effective , and combined with a heat pump could supply heat and hot water efficiently.
Hey @@firstbigbarney can you elaborate on the "off gasing" on water? PCMs are compelling but water is a champ on energy density. For space heating 85 - 90c can be a good temp so I don't see that as a natural disqualification... help me see what you are seeing.
@@mentality-monster the amount of water you would need would be more weight that most roofs could take. Digging a hole in the ground and running a couple if insulated pipes is not very expensive. For a new build even cheaper. There are many places a heat pump cannot be installed and that is not cheap. Or bricks could be integrated with a head pump system.
A small gas boiler can cost 3k to be installed and those things don't last 5 minutes.
The bricks are feolite
Thanks for this. I'm very happy with his list of efficiency losses, allowing a direct comparison to other storage technologies. I'm always interested in passive solar because of how much more efficient it is than active solar. This is a good passive solar battery.
Not sure that passive solar is going to heat to 700C?
@@xxwookey With lenses and mirror yes, but the active control systems required can reduce the feasibility for sure.
Welcome back and congratulations, fascinating development, II wish it all sucess. It could be a gamechanger for large building, district heating and industrial use where heat is used directly. Must make more sense than hydrogen.
Everything makes more sense than hydrogen
Thanks and I agree with you and Kevin that where alternatives to hydrogen exist, they seem to inevitably make more sense than hydrogen.
I’m intrigued what else can be used as the active phase! Granted “burning off” / “boiling off” in the Sintering/Graphitizing Phase is probably an issue, but something like Paraffin Wax or (Bio/Renewable-) Bitumen/Tar etc would be cheap, renewable, and an “Appropriate Material” !
Personally, I think it's a bit naive to insist on not using petroleum when creating clean energy. The goal should be to not burn it. We should use the petroleum we have to keep it from being burned if we can.
@@michaelwisslead5349 Or just invest in alternatives that are better in all sorts of other measures (Water Use, Land Use, Spills, Land Rights) etc, not just CO2e Emitted.
I agree to an extent with your sentiment, but i think engineering them out of the products we use is the best way to end the fossil fuel industries, not to slowly distance from them/use their products efficiently.
Paraffin as an active phase material has been in production for years. To find out more try searching "paraffin phase change house building materials". One use is to have a phase change at 23ºc in drywall sheets. Then when the house warms up during the day to 23º+ the paraffin melts keeping the house cool by absorbing heat and then at night when it cools below 23º at night the paraffin solidifies releasing the heat.
I am hoping to have a video on residential buildings energy efficiency, and phase change materials are one of the techs I would talk about in that one.
Thanks Rosie, this is an excellent and thought provoking report.
For home scale, I can see that the applicability is very limited if thermal storage is used since storage hot water services already provide this and home heating is required for a fraction of the year.
For industrial scale, its very much a different proposition though. The example of using disused coal fired power plant is brilliant as it allows the continued use of infrastructure within the power plant and electricity distribution infrastructure already in place! Go MGA!!
I agree that the domestic application is not obviously a winner. I had to ask though because I know that so many of my viewers are keen on domestic scale techs!
@@EngineeringwithRosie Asking is the key, now we know that this tech is not useful for home scale, so thank you for posing the question!
Home heating might only be required for a fraction of the year in Aus. but in the UK and northern Europe we have millions of homes that need heating for nearly half a year, and personally I'm spending about 5000 AUD a year to do so at the new energy prices, so anything that might cut is of interest.
Great, thorough video. I think the comparisons with other storage tech is very helpful and important. Thanks!
Interesting that safety is first in the list of priorities - but graphite can burn at 400C and is used to heat Aluminium to 700C. If there is a leak of steam and oxygen (air) enters, it will burn like a BBQ.
Next time I talk to them I will ask what their solution to this issue is! Thanks for commenting 😊
That’s an interesting point, but can graphite itself be alloyed to make it harder to ignite or set a sufficiently higher ignition point? I’m not a materials scientist, but it seems they must be doing something like that.
@@davestagner I’m just thinking back to graphite moderated fission reactors - Windscale and Chernobyl come to mind where the graphite seemed to burn well in the right circumstances
@@Richardincancale Fair point. But I don’t think graphite-based thermal block storage could fall to the sort of extreme heat a runaway nuclear reactor core can generate. Especially considering that thermal sensors and fuses could be triggered to manage the incoming electric radiant energy.
yes, was thinking of this too, also long term the liquid aluminum may sip downward.. those brick does not have any casing..
Thank you Rosie. This is another example of smart people coming up with a solid addition to the matrix of solutions that we are certain to require to achieve our effectiveness goals.
I was reading up on Graphite Blocks for Heat Storage / Graphite Powder as a Heat Transfer Fluid, but this is even cooler!, almost like “vapor chambers” but *molten metal*. !
Graphite has a specific heat ~0.7 J/g while this company is trying to leverage the phase change of aluminum at 700°C
One really has to ask how "cheap" this can be with graphite and aluminum over $2k U.S. a tonne.
I'm assuming their 'inert gas' is going to be argon and that has been going up too, at the miniscule volumes I use.
@@jimurrata6785 Could be nitrogen too, right? And it’s probably in a closed loop I’d imagine. That or *Supercritical CO2* which was also mentioned in some of the papers on Graphite Based Heat Storage
@@ericlotze7724 nitrogen is non-flammable but is still highly reactive.
Most high explosives are nitrogen based (azides, TNT, nitroglycerin) but nitrogen and carbon (graphite) create cyanide, and that's something you'd want to avoid at all costs.
@@jimurrata6785 True!, I remember hearing it was reactive in some cases in the right conditions, didn’t realize solid graphite was an issue! I *think* at least the temperature is still too low din this case, but CO2 is actually an “Active Gas” in welding, not a shield gas like nitrogen or argon, which was something neat I learned in school!
@@ericlotze7724 750°C doesn't sound too high but you can be assured that it is a lot hotter than that at whatever point in the loop an electric element is used for heating the 'inert gas'
These bricks need to soak up the heat and that would happen at a snails pace if there isn't considerable ∆
Supercritical pressures for CO² (74bar/1,000psi) would require some insane plumbing and a nuclear bunker to contain the pile of bricks.
Yes, CO² is an active gas when welding. It ionizes helping to sustain the arc and keep the heat in the weld pool.
~5:00 I'd love to see the aluminum alloy that expands as it freezes.
There's a reason for risers in casting.
Ha ha, nicely caught! But to be fair to Alex, I don't think he said Aluminium expands when it freezes, only that it can crack its vessel.
@@EngineeringwithRosie By vessel you mean the brick not the bunker they are stored in, correct?
This is a great idea. Cheap, readily available materials
250Kwh storage per m3 sounds amazing
You get the same value for water (pressurized, to mitigate boiling) without conversion to steam plus the added benefit of being able to pump it efficiently, which you can't say for gases. Plus water is basically for free. Only downside here is the lower Temperature level, which reduces the carnot efficiency even further. This can be mitigated with heat pumps instead of resistance heating... so imho this product tries to solve an issue, where there is none to beginn with.
E.g. my home country (germany) has a gas storage of 242 TWh, which is the 4th biggest in the world. You could store this much energy in around one cubic km of water, maybe two...
@@lars3509 Pressurized hot water sounds highly corrosive and a safety hazard in case of failure. Both of these factors will raise the cost of the system. They say their advantage is the price, so it is not clear pressurized hot water at scale would be cheaper.
@@ryuuguu01 1. Storing water is not that big of an issue, as you make it sound.
2. I wouldn't use tanks but underground storage in suitable mineral deposits or suitable man-made caverns. Minerals are not good heat conducters (except diamond), and the walls are basically infinitely thick. as the flow of heat decreases with the thickness of the wall, these systems are good insulated if they are just large enough...
3. Water storage is already used widely on smaller scales, but seasonal storage is discussed and considered feasible (Finland currently develops a 300000 m3 system), read for example "Seasonal heat storages in district heating systems" by Heimo Zinko. They consider lower pressures than I do, but they still have 50 kWh per cubic meter at an estimated cost of 400 SEK/m3 (total system cost), which is 37 USD at current rate. Especially considering the cost of Aluminium at 6200 per cubic meter. So if such block contains around 10 % Al by volume, the cost of the equivalent storage (0.2 m3) would be 137 USD. And then you have no peripheric equipment at all.
I do admit tho, that the systems provide heat at lower temperature levels, however, most energy consumed is at a temperature lower than 350 °C, which is what I consider a limit for feasible heat storage in water (critical temperature of water is at 375 °C).
Water has 4.5x the specific heat of aluminum at only 20°C (4.2 J/g vs 0.92 J/g for Al)
At 360°C (under pressure) water has an amazing 15 J/g. There's a *_very good reason_* nuclear reactors use pressurized hot water.
Corrosion is not a problem if you spec the right materials and the water is properly buffered.
These types of heat batteries would be fantastic here in Quebec. Electricity to heat is what we need!
So amazing - IMHO we have several options now for grid-scale storage that will work, and given the projected need we’re going to need them all…I’m also thinking that lithium should be used in applications where portability and/or high power density are critical (e.g cars), so it would be nice to have solutions like this one do the heavy-lifting wrt gridscale storage rather than lithium
This sounds like it would be a pretty good option for district heating systems. They wouldn't need to convert heat back to electricity, so it would be significantly more efficient. I'm sure many European cities would be interested right now more than ever
very good point; we do need thermal storage solutions in Europe for district heating
Excellent video Rosie. Subscribed!
Thanks Rosie, very interesting!
Thank you for bringing this to us Rosemary.
Those bricks remind me of the weights you get on front loading washing machines they contain a large amount of iron particles
I was starting to feel a bit despondent about our ability to get to net Zero in the future and good to see another energy storage product that looks promising so it gives me a bit more hope for the future. Thanks, Rosie for this.
Interesting subject and solution.
Great editing on this.
Excellent mindset and expectations of solving Energy systems changeovers.
Reminds us of the history of German Industrialisation that has always been interesting for Metallurgical and Chemical technologies.., but so is the rest of the world.
My only concerns would be:
1.) Graphite Sourcing: (As Far as I Know At Least, not an Expert Myself (Yet…) The Main Commercial Sources are Natural Mined Graphite or Coal Tar + Coke/PetCoke Based Synthetic. Both of which aren’t very sustainable/“appropriate materials”
2.) Aluminum Sourcing
3.) End of Life Process (ie Recycling, can it be made into graphite+aluminum powder?, or is gasifying/burning off the graphite the only option, are there (plans for) facilities that do this, or is that essentially not covered (ie no “Cradle to Grave” planning, which would probably lead to landfill) ALTHOUGH these may have a “Functionally Indefinite Lifespan” due to their robust nature (short of the potential creep issue someone mentioned in another comment)
(Edit: Typos)
I am hopeful that sustainable mining will become the norm in coming decades. We need it to, because everything that isn't grown needs to be mined... so long as there remains population growth and countries continue to develop at least.
I'm so glad people are becoming more aware of Phase Change Materials (PCM) and how the principle of "Latent Heat of Fusion" of certain materials can be used to store and release tremendous amounts of energy. Using Aluminum as a PCM is a great choice in this application as it will absorb nearly 400kJ/kg when it melts then return that energy as it solidifies (although I believe MGA is using an Al-Si alloy which depending upon the mix ratios can store between 562kJ/kg and 960kJ/kg). Metals can store tremendous amounts of heat when melted, Beryllium for instance can store 1356kJ/kg. Melt temperatures however these metals make it difficult for DIY people to tinker with them at home for capturing solar or waste heat applications.
Some PCM's that might work for home projects might be Wax, Glycerol, PEG 3350, Sodium Acetate Trihydrate (used in hand warmers), Calcium Chloride, etc..
None of that makes financial sense compared to water for low-temperature applications.
Great for industrial process heat. Of course not for electrical or mechanical power as yes the cost may be low but the conversion equipment (power plant) would be more expensive than batteries.
Good idea
This tech in homes that require mainly heating would be great. We live in Tassie and use most of our energy for heating. Would definitely be an efficient way to load shift heating requirements.
I can see how this would be cheaper than batteries & definitely longer lasting, but I wonder about how cost effective it is vs the thermal storage alternatives with more mundane elements like sand or brick. Also, how much of the Al will oxidize in the melt/freeze with even a little oxygen leaking in or outgassing from other parts of the system?
They do mention that they use an inert gas as a working fluid. So there should be very little oxygen after having to leak into the working fluid and then pass through the graphite bricks to reach the Al.
I think you're right that the cost of MGA would be higher than sand or gravel etc. But those systems provide a much lower temp heat than MGA's, so it would be hard for them to power a steam turbine or other applications that need higher temp heat.
@@EngineeringwithRosie If I'm remembering this concept correctly, for Al the heat of fusion is 10.8kJ/mol, atomic mass is about 27, while the specific heat is 0.9 J/g K. This suggests that at the melting point Al is about 400 times as good for storing energy as far away from the melting point. But if the % of Al in the mix is 5% (20%), then it's acting like something massing 20x (80x). So the cost advantage for sand (or cast iron or taconite whatever cheap stuff you can find that is stable at the required temps) needs to be on the order of 20x (80x) by mass. And there's the benefit of size which I'm ignoring because I have no clue what the density of these MGAs are vs our hypothetical cheap alternative.
Really interesting video and comments. I think this technology could have an application in relatively small scale residential set-ups. The ability to change the rate of heat extraction using simple modulation of the pump that is pumping the inert gas around the heat store is very useful as it allows for the production of low levels of heat for heating efficient buildings, that might only need flow temperatures of 27C even on the coldest winter days, and producting lots of hot water on demand at 50C+, something that Heat Pumps struggle with. In communal installations, it could be used just for hot water production, with space heating being done via heat pumps.Clearly large scale installations can be more efficient due to the greater relative surface area of a small cube of material.
So what is missing is a small high efficiency Stirling engine powering an alternator that could be paired with with a couple hundred bricks in your cellar. And use concentrating solar to produce the heat in the first place.
Gas turbine are far more cost effective. That's why all the small grid electricity generation is done using gas turbines.
@@kentonian Efficiency isn't the name of the game here. What is needed is clean energy, and storing renewables is cleaner than buring gas, providing care is taken during the production process.
Working on it already :D
keep it up Rosie, all the best with sustainable environment, please ask for technology transfer for developing countries under FTA for sustainable use
Hi Rossie thanks the info and going to site.I'm looking to replace my gas boiler for hydronics heating and this seems like a great way to store heat are they looking at small scale systems ?
Just as a thought 🤔 Would it not be worth passing the steam generated through a turbine in every instance before recovering the heat for the use in industry.
Surely there would be less loss and although some of the heat would be lost in passing the steam through the turbine, would it still not recover more of the thermal energy in the grand scheme of things?
I would bow down to your expertise on this Rosie and thank you again for another great video on virgin tech in the most important space of the modern age.
Keep up the great work. 🙏
4:48 I would argue that it is pretty much the opposite of the volume change in water/ice. I mean for Al the ordering increases upon solidification leading to a higher density when solid. Doesn´t mean that it doesn´t lead to internal pressures during solidifaction due to pinning, but the comparison is complety off.
Guessing for home heating they would make something like a tepeo boiler which I think is basically a load of rock/metal in a big metal casing.
There's so much wind and solar being added to different countries energy mix now I am really intrigued about which these different storage methods will become prominent over the next few years.
In my neighborhood. Should have told me, I would have told you were to get a good cup of coffee. They roast there beans here in Newcastle. Might be an idea to have them roast with this new hot tech. Probably not but sounds green anyway.
These blocks or a sand battery would be an efficient way of domestic underfloor heating on cold winter nights. I have floorboards with a 30 mm gap on a concrete slab. Pumping part of the room air through a sand battery and back under the floor with thermostat control would be a very efficient way of room heating I would think.
For places that are cold, storing heat cheaply can already be quite a tempting option.
This might actually be a good way of increasing the wind and solar power used in central heating systems. If you just go all in on isolating the bricks and you only need water at 60C, then you can keep the losses low. The problem is if you live a place where it can be cold, with no sun and wind for many days in a row. In that case you would need a large "battery", and on an average you might only use 5% of the capacity. But there is nothing inside the battery that should brake, thus the system should be able to run for many years. All moving parts are outside the battery, and you do not need a gas turbine, only a head exchanger and a pump. Electricity is a high quality of energy, but maybe you could use parabolic trough solar to head the bricks and use electricity as the backup. Just a thought I have not tried running the numbers.
It will be interesting to see whether they do come up with a domestic scale system. Otherwise, there are a lot of coal plants making combined heat and power in parts of Europe. That would be a great place to reprupose with MGA.
also, would you be able to do more videos on thermal energy storage for steam/ power generation (molten salt storage and designs that improve on it)?
This looks like something that would best be done at large scales because of surface area to volume ratios and the use of steam turbines to get electricity out of it.
CSIRO have one that uses an insulated block of silicon, and it has been commercialised.
Would be very interested in thermal storage that could be used for residential heating. Eutectic salts look interesting but seem (justified or not) to have a lot of detractors and wax seems to be popular but does not appear to have the heat capacity to be cost effective. Regards
Talking of round-trip efficiency really put new technologies into perspective. Considering solar PV for example, let's say ~20% generational efficiency, then after projection losses, from a ~50% solar duty, 30% round trip efficiency of MGA, and it is STILL economically viable AND competitive against current tech from the last n years. We don't even need legislation to bury the hatchet on combusting fossil fuels for grid scale generation; price alone will do it.
One more thing. Thank you Mr Alex Post; you have finallly said in public, what I have been screaming(!!!) at all my favourite RUclipsrs for years- Round-Trip Efficiency doesn't matter. Not a bit. (All the other stuff, 'What he said'.)
Using something along these lines to capture excess solar energy during the day and then using the resultant supply of heated materials as feedstock to your home's heat pump solutions, specifically for heating your home and domestic water supply, would seem like an imminently practical use of this technology. Most of the electricity used by the modern home is not for turning on a light or charging up a small electronic device. Those use very little power, relatively speaking. Heating things up, or cooling them off, is how most electricity is consumed, and these thermal storage bricks could very easily be used to help address those demands.
Hi Rosie - would you have any guesses on what the "special ingredient" (binder?) may be?
and why doesn't the liquid Al alloy leak out of the graphite matrix? (the shiny sparkles being visible along the sides of the block)
The main problem is the operating temperatures. I may have missed the info, but what is the thermal conductivity of the brick? How fast it can “charge”/”dischare” ? For example in many processes in the chemical industry, peak waste heat output only occurs in a short period of time, I'm not sure a system based on this technology could respond in a decent amount of time.
For electricity storage, I tend to put more faith in new battery technologies such as sodium-based cells, which will also be cheaper than current lithium-based cells and "easier" to recycle for small installations and pumped storage power plants as grid balancing sources.
@Dqtube I was wondering what the benefit of this would be over using rock or sand. I think you answered my question. Aluminium is an excellent thermal conductor so the power of these bricks will be much higher than that of rock or sand.
Combining this with Thermo-Photo Voltaics would increase the total efficiency most likely above using a steam engine to generate electricity. Also, in some areas with a lot of sunlight, you could use mirrors and lenses to use Sunlight to heat the bricks to operating temperature, rather than converting to electricity first, which has losses at the inverter and due to line impedance.
What about using them in a solar hot water system? Much lower cost than pv, simpler and not the efficiency loss from conversion. Not applicable for a house perhaps but a central heating plant, a nursing home, laundry, strip mall, etc. could supply hot water as well.
There's no point, just use a tank of water. The only advantage of the blocks is using electric elements to heat them to a very high temperature.
Have you looked into thermal storage with ice?
Which is then used for cooling/ air conditioning. That is something which can be done at a single home scale, using off the shelf tech.
Cooling your house is becoming increasingly important and a large consumer of energy in many places people live.
The problem with ice is that it doesn’t provide a huge differential temperature. The difference between solid and gas phases is only 100c (by definition!). You want materials that can store a much larger temperature differential without changing behavior. That’s why cheap solid materials like sand or gravel are used… they can be heated up a lot more than water without phase change. The advantage of these bricks over sand is energy density per unit volume, plus the very handy solid form factor, while still using inexpensive materials.
Can phase change heating benefit? like can you operate a heat pump and transfer more then you put in?
I am going to do this in my house in Portugal using Feolite an Australian invention. Feolite is sintered iron oxide. Basically it will be a huge pizza oven and when it is off a flame gulper engine will suck hot air out of it driving a small electric generator. You can also use the oven to cook in and to heat the house. Personally I think this liquid metal idea is a bad idea a hot air engine will work just fine.
cool
This basic tec idea, apparently in a less sophisticated form, is offered by Tepeo, Aquafischent and similar systems. I wondered if these bricks could basically be an enhancement/replacement for those. The "2% heat loss per day" seems incredibly good. The idea is simple enough. A "brick-boiler" or "heat-battery" is heated up by the cheapest off-peak electric, then all water for central-heating and tap-water is rapidly served up from heat-exchange. It's a plug-in replacement for "combi-boilers". I wondered about the exact cost numbers because Tepeo and Aquafischent seemed IMHO outrageous.
For houses, heat only is still good for many. We live off grid and heat by wood stove. When it is at the peak of the burn it is too hot, by morning it is too cold.
There is no free lunch unless you choose the system borders to make your case more attractive. Poor efficiency always has a cost, someone pays the bill. The fact that 40% roundtrip efficiency + investments is attractive speaks volumes about how bad intermittent energy sources are when scaled (>20-25% of total energy).
Presumably you´d have to operate the aluminium in an inert gas environment because it would oxidize like crazy in the liquid state, and the graphite would burn as well. Also, it is much more efficient to load and unload energy as heat without the electricity conversion first and last.
Rosie, good morning!
You did not put into your explanations the increase of temperature inside the buildings and how you connect this electric energy production to the household electric things.
Regards.
I'm curious how the heat capacity of MGA's phase-change blocks compares to that of other thermal storage companies, like sand and water? If I was MGA, it seems like that would be the first thing I'd state, i.e. 'It holds 2.5x the energy per volume compared to sand.' *That and, 'it's 2.5x cheaper per kWh than lithium ion batteries and doesn't lose capacity over time.'
Good video. These companies are targeting industrial scale systems but to my mind it seems that thermal stores would work better on a domestic scale, as in if a house generated solar/wind excess then that could be stored to heat the house directly with very little loss as you would not be converting back to electricity. Is there something I'm missing here?
What is the status on strait heat to electricity. Making steam to turn a turbine has so many losses and moving parts
What would the cost for a half megawatt heat storage system shipped to Arkansas? Used primarily to heat greenhouses.
What is the advantage compared to molten salt or sand thermo acumulatirs???
you need to design a cascade heat engines,that 2 or 3 heat engines in serie using a different gas on each step.
Very good questions. Standard Marketing answers. “Plenty, more that, efficient,….” No real data. The primary market they go for normally has enough space. A cheap sand battery what can be easily heated up to 1500 degrees Celsius would be more cost efficient. Sand is cheap and doesn’t break after ~30 years. Still, big industry doesn’t go for it. There will be reasons. For ones own Family house or even Appartement all those ideas are not suitable as there is just not enough space. And still, the temperature to heat the battery must be gained in first place too.
Are there alternative conversions to electricity other than steam turbines that can be more efficient?
very interresting ! But i doubt the ease of recyclability tho... That would be much easier if you didn't need to expand a lot of energy at the end to crush the whole bricks, like, if the insides of the bricks was loose sand and aluminium particles mixed together, and only using their structuraly sound inovative material for the outer shell of the bricks.
This and molten metal batteries could be a good combo. The molten batteries need to be hot to funktion and the bricks could provide the heat for longer periods of times. So that the batteries can act quickly. Maybe... :)
For applications, that require temperatures above 1000C it makes sense, however hot objects radiate heat at the 4th power relative to temperature. Which means the heat bleed off is very high at high temps, even with good insulation. Sand storage is in the 500C.......it is very cheap, and if your sand silo needs maintenance........it can be dumped out the bottom and refilled easily. Either way, thermal storage has massive cost and lifespan advantages over lithium which on daily charge cycling lasts only 10 years. Eventually, Thorium MSR will be built and power the grid.....its just simpler,cheaper and more sustainable.
Can these bricks be used in a home for heating? In traditional solar heating, water is used as the thermal storage unit. Can these bricks be used instead, and would it be better than water?
Have you heard of Aeromine, will be interesting to hear your opinion
what is the LOCE if the thermal energy per Kwh
Could or should an MGA thermal system be paired with a concentrated solar power plant?
Here's a killer app for this. In the UK, start with these 2 facts:
1/ greenhouse agriculture is challenged by gas prices, which drive their huge heat reqs.
2/ wind power comes onshore in North-East England, and is wasted because the grid cannot cope, or even worse, the suppliers are paid to stop it coming onshore.
- The answer is:
Electrolyse at cheapest point upstream, probably at the coast where wind-farms land their electric output. Pipe hydrogen to agricultural neighbourhoods. There, a fuel-cell estate creates 50-50 electricity/heat mix, storing the heat in these bricks, and pushing the electricity into the grid. The heat is then served up in bulk to the greenhouse agri-bizzen.
- The result is:
- Approaching 100% efficient use of the wind-farm's excess energy.
- Extra points for buffering the hydrogen in some storage tanks!
- Downside is: need to build a bulk hydrogen distribution system; but you need it anyway.
so what about limit temperature for heat exchanger metal tube ?
iron with 1300'C maybe will easier to deform,, then steam through iron pipe will be leak out..
although graphite can withstand 3000'C,
Might be a stupid question but given you can see lots of the little balls of aluminium on the outside of brick, wouldn't they melt and then fall out of the brick creating a molten mess at the bottom of the insulation chamber? Or do the bricks have to get fired first before being added to the chamber so all the aluminium on the outside of each brick is no longer there?
Also how do you endure good dispersal of the aluminium?
Wouldn't a more efficient way of doing this be to have layers of the higher metal point material and imprint lots of shallow divots where balls of aluminium can melt, collect and remain forever?
I don't really understand the process of heating and melting and extracting the heat to be honest. Would the bricks be attached to metal plates that have electricity running through them? Or are the bricks heated by air?
It sounds just like the Ambri battery but with different matrials, I wonder which will be cheaper
I really hate the Carnot inefficiency 😅 I dream of 80+ efficient energy world. Could you please explain or make that happen 🤣🤣🤣 - Fly wheels, kinetic and potential energy transfer only FTW 😅
I've had the flu while watching this, so I may have missed the answers to these questions, but what I'd have loved to know is. 1. In a massive specifically designed facility, what is the longest you could store this heat? Days? Weeks? Months? If the latter, what about it's use in Community heating projects? Maybe for home heating, we could just have a hundred 'Hot-Brix' delivered.
what about the chemical reaction between graphite and aluminum？or you capsulate aluminum by some non reactive material？
its funny how much effort goes towards the fact that people just cant all agree to sleep at night
where is the production equipment in the empty place? going to start off with existing equipmment off the shelf and then optimize for new stuff? might be best to buy an older facility that already produces graphite and then add on.
What happens in the summer time when you dnt need heat . Can the heat go through a cycle to cool a building
You can generate electricity and use that to run an air-conditioner 😊
OK, having some experience with the defense industry I tend to look for military' applications of commercial products so I might add survivability as another criteria (which might be somewhat similar to safety but is a bit different as well).
Thus as we see Russian attacking the power infrastructure of Ukraine, survivability might also be an important factor and this method might rank higher that the regard (vs some of the other methods), given one can harden the turbines which seems doable.
Oooooh so it's some tech that no one can ever use cus it's gonna be hyper expensive, NICE!
Graphite is carbon, could this be a use for biochar? Then you lock away carbon too.
Please someone combine this with a concentrating solar thermal collector. Either tower, parabolic dish, could get up to 750 degrees. Linear fresnel or parabolic trough could get most of the way then top it off with resistive heating.
Mmmmmmmm.
Sand batteries.
Lovely.
If heat storage exist to heat homes, is there a cold storage to cool our houses?
Feolite was invented in the UK in 70s.
Same thing
price of it and size ( capacity in kwh)
If the storage temperature could be raised to 3000F thermophotovoltaic PV could increase the round trip efficiency but you would have to get rid of the aluminum.
I will have a video coming up about a thermal energy storage tech that can go up *nearly* that high!
It all boils down to economics. Especially the comparison with the much more efficient (less cycle losses) Li-On (LFP). It is easy to say that the capital costs are lower than Li-On but how is this calculated? Are they comparing to the costs today? What trajectory is expected? Li-On Opex and Capex is going down and will continue to go down rapidly as technology progresses every year and production capacity grows exponentially (Wright's law). There is another problem. Reaction speed. A Li-On battery has a really quick reaction time. In 100 ms it can go from charging to discharging. A renewable grid needs bi-directional flex capacity that reacts quickly (clouds coming over etc). I think this heat system is not only way more inefficient. It is way slower. As a result you will have to build way more wind and solar capacity and you need to curtail which will even add more to the cost in total. The best and cheapest combination is solar / wind / Li-On (LFP)!!
Store the electric in high value batteries for what it is needed for and the excess
as heat and low grade heat for other purposes, don't store electric energy as heat
when the higher use is electricity stored in batteries.
I think we'll need to wait a while to find out the answer for sure. Rondo are very confident that they will be cheaper, with existing materials and equipment costs, but scaled up to factory manufacturing environment. Every startup is confident they're the cheapest though, the only way to know is to wait until they have some sales.
A couple of questions spring to mind.
1) Does the aluminium settle to the bottom of the brick over time, or does surface tension keep the liquid aluminium in place ?
2) How much of the aluminium is converted to oxide by outgassed o2 ? Do you have to scrub the O2 out of your inert gas loop ?