Storing energy as heat is a proven pathway to address the challenge solar power faces when it’s dark or cloudy outside by enabling the capture, storage and on-demand release of thermal energy.
Storing energy as heat is a proven pathway to address the challenge solar power faces when it’s dark or cloudy outside by enabling the capture, storage and on-demand release of thermal energy. The process, called high-temperature thermal energy storage (TES), however, can be prohibitively expensive. Researchers at Penn State have found that steel slags — a rock-like waste byproduct of the steelmaking process — may potentially serve as a low-cost, heat storage candidate for TES applications.
They published their first-phase findings of a three-phase project today (Sept. 15) in Solar Energy. The first phase focused on identifying the morphological structure of three types of slags to evaluate their suitability for thermal energy storage. The eventual goal of the research, the team said, is to reduce steel slag waste by evaluating its potential for reuse as a TES material.
“One of the problems with many renewable energy sources, like solar, is that they are intermittent,” said Olumide Ogunmodimu, assistant professor of energy and mineral engineering at Penn State and co-author on the paper. “Solar energy is inherently intermittent and variable because sunlight is not continuously available due to the day-night cycle and changing weather conditions. This means we need to find some way to store the energy captured from the sun for later use.”
Read More: Penn State University
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