Abstract
The sugar mill in Tanegashima burns sugarcane bagasse as a fuel of in-house power and heat source and ineluctably generates a massive amount of unused heat around 200°C. On the other hand, many factories in Tanegashima uses oil-fired boilers to generate a process steam up to 120°C all year around. In order to resolve this spatial and seasonal mismatch between heat source and demand, we propose the application of thermochemical energy storage and transport system using zeolite steam adsorption and desorption cycle to the sugar mill and the factories. In this study, a conceptual design of a heat storage unit namely “Heat Charger” was proposed employing counter-flow type moving bed reactor. The heat charger was designed by our in-house quasi-2D simulation code which was validated with the result of preliminary heat charging test. The energy storage and transport system including the heat charger was evaluated from economical aspect. The electricity cost of blower power due to a large pressure loss in the moving bed accounted for most of the OPEX and a flattened cylindrical reactor with 3.5 m in diameter and 0.4 m in height was designed to desorb 1520 kg/h zeolite at the sugar mill.
