For Tunable Thermochemical Energy Storage

To accelerate the energy transition there is an urgent need for energy storage both for electricity and heat due to the intermittency of renewable resources.

As a large part of our energy consumption is in form of thermal energy (78% in the built environment), and as there is a large amount of unused low temperature waste heat (8900 PJ in Europe), thermal energy storage offers route towards bridging availability and demand.

Long term loss-free compact heat storage is the missing link, and Thermo-Chemical Energy Storage (TCES) has the potential to play this role.

Unfortunately, present TCES concepts lack flexibility as a precise fit between the phase diagram of TCES-materials, the system design and the temperature demand of an application is needed.

Therefore, most of the R&D for applying TCES is very specific for a particular application and switching to another application requires that much of the R&D process has to be redone. 4TunaTES will deliver a groundbreaking flexible TCES technology that can be easily adapted to different applications (variable in- and output temperatures) and thereby reduce the development costs by 90% as the R&D the process does not have be redone repeatedly. 4TunaTES develops a TCES-prototype that can be used for domestic use cases, which addresses three challenges: 1) radically new TCES materials with tunable phase diagrams by using a second gas or dopants, 2) heat exchanging components with a high degree of manufacturing flexibility, and 3) revolutionary systems with electricity adapted thermodynamic cycles.

CNR and DLR will integrate the key findings in their high-TRL project portfolio, and Cellcius (CEL) will integrate the successful materials and designs in their technology. This will unlock the potential thermal energy storage.

For this purpose, a strong consortium has been built which brings together computational material scientists (VUB), physical-chemists (TUE, CIIAE), mechanical engineers (CNR, DLR) and heat battery developer (CEL).