Abstract
In order to save energy resources it is about to take up as an urgent problem to use effectively every kind of energy, not to mention thermal energy. Until comparatively lately, from economical estimation we have never made positive use of waste gas energy at low temperature level, to say nothing of solar energy, for instance. Of cource energy saving is a fine thing, but considering future prospect of increasing energy consumption and thermal pollution, etc., besides this it is necessary to consider how to use effectively the unused energy resorces which have frequently been neglected. From such a point of view it is natural the matter of energy storage becomes a subject of discussion, and as a matter of course thermal energy storage belongs to the category of the subject. Now, heat energy storage methods mainly adopted hitherto depond on the use of heat capacity of the materials, such as sand, rock and water or on the use of latent heat of fusion or phase-change of inorganic substances or eutectic salt mixtures. However, these ways of energy storage are not always high for energy storing density and what is worse, though these are of course useful for short-term storing, incompetent for long-term because of heat loss taken place by maintaining the materials under high temperature level, even if adequate thermal insulation are performed. Under such situations, in order to avoid the faults a new heat storage method is proposed in this paper. This way which is based on the ues of reversible chemical reaction cycles makes not only long-term heat storage but also high energy storing density possible. Furthermore, in this paper the principles of this method and results of basic experiments are reported. At any rate, there remain still many unsolved problems for putting this way to practical use, but as a new method which makes up for the weakness of the previous its coming development are expected.
