Progress on Thermal Energy Storage Using Nanotailored Silica with Aluminium Doping

Abstract

Nanotailored microporous silica represents one of the more recent artificially prepared advanced materials used in heat transformation and conservation field after silica gel and various zeolite and zeolite-like materials. In this work, we introduce experimental findings on the energy characteristics of water adsorption on nanotailored microporous silica with 1.5 % aluminium doping in the structure. The downscaled system in this work simulates actual working conditions in a controlled environment for both heating and cooling mode. The key properties of this material lie in the regeneration temperatures 60 to 80 ℃ and COP, which reaches values around 0.6 in case of cooling and 0.7 in case of heating. In absolute values at ΔT = 15 ℃, the system reaches storing capacities of about 90 Wh and 126 Wh per adsorbent kilogram in terms of cooling and heating potential energy, respectively. An important factor of kinetic influence on system performance is discussed on a basis of constant time experiment and time-dependent energy flow breakthrough analysis. Constraining factors are found to be in parallel through the driving force of the pressure swing as well as the heat transfer through the body of the adsorption bed.