Economical energy storage for months in an aluminum system
Althoughrenewable energiescan offer a clean and secure future for Europe, issues such as their intermittency mean that their potential is somewhat limited in certain applications. Now, the European Reveal project is seeking to develop an alternative that usesaluminum to store energyin the form of heat for months or years, at very low cost.
This initiative has the support of the EU Horizon Europe project and the Swiss State Secretariat for Education, Research, and Innovation, which launched this initiative last July with several important objectives. These range from the development of technologies thatenable aluminum to be produced from alumina without CO2 emissions, to the use of aluminum itself as a form oflong-term electricity storagethat can be used to heat homes in buildings during the winter months.about:blank
The idea would be to use surplus energy from photovoltaic, wind, or hydroelectric sources andstore it in the form of heat in aluminum systems. The Swiss Institute of Solar Technology (SPF) will collaborate in its development, and its concept is radically different from traditional energy storage methods, such as batteries, hydrogen, or synthetic fuels, and uses aluminum metal as a means of storage.
Preliminary studies have shown that it is possible to use aluminum as a storage method thanks to its high energy density,15 MWh/m3, and initial calculations also showed that storing energy in this way can be significantly cheaper than, for example, using other alternatives such as chemical batteries or synthetic fuels.
In addition, discharging the energy stored in aluminum results in reaction products. These can be converted back into aluminum, closing a sustainable cycle, but environmental impact assessments must still be carried out to determine whether or not this is possible.
An initiative that will involve collaboration between the governments of Iceland, Slovenia, Norway, the Netherlands, the Czech Republic, Germany, and Switzerland, and will run from July 2022 to June 2026.
Source |Reveal-storage
