A lithium-ion battery would cost $300 a kilowatt-hour and only have a capacity to store energy from one to four hours. With a duration lasting hundreds of hours, sand as a storage medium would cost from $4 to $10 a kilowatt-hour.
The world''s first commercial "sand battery" stores heat at 500 degrees Celsius for months at a time. It can be used to heat homes and offices and provide high-temperature heat for industrial
A lithium-ion battery would cost $300 a kilowatt-hour and only have a capacity to store energy from one to four hours. With a duration lasting hundreds of hours, sand as a storage medium...
Researchers at the US National Renewable Energy Laboratory (NREL) have developed a technology that reveals how heaters powered by renewable energy sources like wind and solar can raise the temperature of sand particles, which can then be deposited into silos for storage and later use.
The patented technology is based on thermal energy storage, or TES, which normally uses molten salts or even superheated rocks to store energy and shows promise as a low-cost alternative to existing storage solutions.
A laboratory-scale prototype validated the technology and allowed researchers to create a computer model that shows a commercial-scale device would retain more than 95% of its heat for at least five days.
"Lithium-ion batteries have really cornered the market at two to four hours of storage, but if we want to achieve our carbon reduction goals, we will need long-duration energy storage devices—things that can store energy for days," Jeffrey Gifford, a postdoctoral fellow at NREL who is involved in the development, said in a media statement.
"Particle thermal energy storage doesn''t rely on rare earth metals or materials that have complex and unsustainable supply chains. For example, in lithium-ion batteries, there are a lot of stories about the challenge of mining cobalt more ethically."
In addition to TES, Gifford''s expertise is in computational fluid dynamics. That knowledge is important because the sand needs to flow through the storage device. Other TES media include concrete and rocks, which can easily retain heat but remain solidly in place.
"Your heat transfer is much higher and much quicker and much more effective if you’re moving your media," Gifford said.
TES also has another key advantage: the cost. Head researcher Zhiwen Ma has calculated sand is the cheapest option for energy storage when compared to four rival technologies, including compressed air energy storage (CAES), pumped hydropower, and two types of batteries.
CAES and pumped hydropower can only store energy for tens of hours. The cost per kilowatt-hour for CAES ranges from $150 to $300, while for pumped hydropower it is about $60. A lithium-ion battery would cost $300 a kilowatt-hour and only have a capacity to store energy from one to four hours. With a duration lasting hundreds of hours, sand as a storage medium would cost from $4 to $10 a kilowatt-hour. To ensure low cost, the heat would be generated using off-peak, low-price electricity.
Molten salts are already in use to temporarily store energy, but they freeze at about 220 degrees Celsius and start to decompose at 600 degrees Celsius. The sand Ma intends to use comes out of the ground in the Midwest of the United States, does not need to be kept from "freezing," and can retain considerably more heat, in the range of 1,100 C that can store heat for power generation or to replace burning fossil fuels for industrial heat.
Expanding the amount of energy that can be stored in sand, on the other hand, is as simple as adding more sand.
"That''s a marginal cost to add additional storage capacity," said Craig Turchi, who is also involved in the research. "We need storage ranging from minutes to months. Batteries worked really well in the minutes-to-hours space in terms of how they scale. And when you get into months of storage, you’re usually looking at making a fuel like hydrogen to provide that long-term storage. But in the period between multiple hours and two weeks, there’s not a good fit right now. Hydrogen is too expensive for that. Batteries are too expensive for that."
The components needed to convert the superheated sand back to electricity do require an upfront cost. "But once you''ve paid for that," Turchi said, "if you just want to have more duration for your power it''s much, much cheaper to add more sand than the alternative, which is to keep adding batteries."
The quest for sustainable and efficient energy storage systems has spurred numerous innovations, with each trying to solve the inherent problems of their predecessors. For years, lithium-ion batteries have reigned supreme, powering everything from smartphones to electric vehicles. However, the growing demand for sustainable energy storage and the ethical and environmental issues associated with lithium-ion batteries have intensified the search for alternatives. Among the emerging technologies aiming to revolutionize the energy storage landscape are sand batteries. This article dives deep into the intricacies of sand-based energy storage, its advantages, challenges, and whether it is a temporary fad or a sustainable, long-term solution.
The science of sand batteries is relatively straightforward yet ingenious. A Finnish start-up, Polar Night Energy pioneered this technology, which essentially involves using solar panels and wind turbines to heat up vats filled with sand to temperatures of up to 1,000 degrees Celsius. This heated sand then serves as a thermal reservoir, storing energy that can be tapped into as needed for district heating networks.
The exciting part is that the sand can maintain this stored energy for weeks or even months, a significant leap over the lithium-ion batteries, which typically can only hold energy for a few hours.
The Long Duration Energy Storage Council has reported that over $900 million has been invested in clean storage technologies since 2021, a significant increase from $360 million the previous year. They also predict that large-scale, renewable energy storage investments could reach $3 trillion by 2040. Given these trends, it’s clear that investors are starting to take alternative energy storage solutions like sand batteries seriously.
The growing interest in and funding for sand batteries, along with their demonstrated capabilities, suggest that they are not a passing fad. However, whether they can replace or significantly supplement current energy storage solutions like lithium-ion batteries on a large scale remains to be seen. The technology shows enormous promise, especially for long-term, grid-scale storage where their limitations in energy density are less of a concern.
However, there are still many challenges to be addressed, including scalability, cost, and global adoption. Even as more funding pours into this sector, these batteries will have to prove that they can provide reliable, on-demand power at scale, something that traditional fossil fuel sources have excelled at.
In conclusion, sand batteries represent an exciting and promising avenue in the pursuit of sustainable, long-term energy storage solutions. While they are not without their challenges, the potential benefits—both ethical and practical—are too significant to ignore. As the technology matures and more investments flow in, sand batteries could very well play a crucial role in shaping a more sustainable energy landscape for the future.
With a plethora of advantages, sand batteries offer a compelling case for being a substantial part of our renewable energy future. However, like all emerging technologies, they come with their own set of challenges that need to be addressed for widespread adoption and implementation. Therefore, while it is too early to hail them as the definitive answer to our energy storage woes, dismissing them as a mere fad would be equally premature. As we inch closer to a climate crisis, innovations like sand batteries could be the stepping stones to a sustainable energy ecosystem.
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