Author(s)

Nikolaos Stathopoulos, Nikolaos Papadimitriou, Vassilis Belessiotis, Elias Papanicolaou

Solar and Other Energy Systems Laboratory, Demokritos National Center for Scientific Research, Attiki, Athens, Greece.

Thermal Energy Storage is becoming a necessary component of sustainable energy production systems as it helps alleviate intrinsic limitations of Renewable Energy Sources, such as intermittent use and mismatch between power demand and supply. This paper discusses a packed bed thermocline tank as a thermal energy storage solution. Firstly, this paper presents the development of a numerical model calculating heat transfers within the tank, based on a discretization over several nodes and the nodal formulation of the heat balance equation. The model considers a filler material and a heat transferring fluid and uses the finite difference method to calculate the temperature evolution of the two media across the tank. The model was validated with two different packed bed systems from the literature during a discharging process, presenting a good fit with the experimental results. Secondly, the experimental packed bed is presented and characterized for a charging cycle from ambient temperature to approximately 180?C. The charging experiment was accurately reproduced with the numerical model requiring minimal computational time. Two additional charging modes were simulated with different inlet HTF conditions: constant temperature and varying temperature following the profile produced by a thermal solar collector field. The temperature profiles obtained from the three charging modes were analysed and compared to each other. The proposed numerical and experimental tools will be used in future studies for a better understanding of the design and operating conditions of packed bed thermal energy storage systems.

Thermal Energy Storage, Packed Bed, Numerical, Model, Experimental

Stathopoulos, N. , Papadimitriou, N. , Belessiotis, V. and Papanicolaou, E. (2023) Packed Bed Thermocline Thermal Energy Storage for Medium-Temperature Concentrating Solar Systems: Numerical and Experimental Study. Journal of Power and Energy Engineering, 11, 1-23. doi: 10.4236/jpee.2023.115001.