Just add water: Salt battery could help renewable energy use - home battery system

BERLIN (AP)—
In the buzz and heat of the Reuters thermal power station in Berlin, there is a shiny device that looks inappropriate for decades --
Old Machine Hall
Vattenfall, the plant's operator, said its silver tubes and barrels contain a substance that could become a key ingredient in fossil fuels --free future.
This energy company and a Swedish start-up
Up, testing the use of salt
Although not a common table variety
Store heat, which accounts for more than half of German electricity consumption.
If it works well, the system can help solve the problems caused by the world's upper wind and renewable energy sources such as solar energy: they are unreliable, which means they sometimes generate too much energy, sometimes there is too little power.
"Germany currently has enough renewable energy installed capacity to produce twice as much as it needs, but this is not static," said Hendrick rogreen, who is in charge of the Vattenfall salt storage project.
Competitor E.
According to recent calculations, solar and wind can generate up to 52 gigawatts of electricity during the daytime rush hour on Easter Monday.
At that time, German energy consumption was only 49.
5 Giwa hours
"There are a lot of facilities like this, and theoretically you don't need a backup of gasoline or other fossil fuels," Roeglin said . ".
For a highly industrialized country like Germany, phasing out nuclear power, coal and gas is an ambitious task.
The government has set a deadline to shut down all nuclear power plants in the country by 2022 and stop coal-fired power generation by 2038;
Gas will stop.
Until sometime around the middle of this century, it was discovered that there was a complete reliance on renewable technologies.
This program, known as energy conversion, other countries are paying close attention to how to control greenhouse gas emissions and reach a Paris climate agreement aimed at keeping global warming below 2 degrees Celsius (3. 6 Fahrenheit).
Experts agree that replacing fossil fuels requires a range of technical solutions, some already in place and some still in experimental stages. California-
Australian-based carmaker Tesla has shown in Australia that it can offer a large amount of lithium.
Stabilize the ion battery system of the power grid.
At the Reuter power plant in Berlin, which provides heat to 600,000 households in the capital, the current solution includes alumina, also known as quicklime.
Swedish starter-
Up SaltX has been using the simple chemical reaction that occurs when quicklime gets wet: salt-
Just like the grain absorbs water, it becomes calcium carbonate and releases a lot of heat in the process.
By removing water again
There is no different process from baking.
This material becomes alumina again.
This process basically reflects the way the battery works, except that the system stores heat rather than electricity.
SaltX said it also got a patent to cover quicklime with tiny particles --
Called Nanocoating —
To prevent it from coming together after several heating and cooling cycles.
Roeglin says the process can absorb ten times more energy than the water currently used to generate electricity. to-Heating facilities.
Unlike a hot water tank that slowly cools over time, the system can maintain chemistry-
Energy is trapped for longer.
Just add water.
The pilot project in Berlin can now store enough energy to heat about 100 large houses.
But SaltX says the facility can easily scale up and provide heat to any home or office that has been connected to the heating system in the capital area. Such networks —
Consisting of pipes that deliver hot water or steam from power plants to consumers-
There are many European countries, Canada, the United States, Japan and China.
"It makes absolutely sense to try this method because storing energy is a very important step forward," said Kai Hufendiek, energy economist at Stuttgart University . ".
Hufendiek, who was not involved in the project, said that if the system was able to produce temperatures above 500 degrees Celsius,
As SaltX claims
This also makes industrial applications such as food processing interesting.
SaltX also noted that the Alumina currently mined in Finland can be safely recycled, which makes it more advantageous than some battery technologies that use rare or toxic materials.
"If your goal is to become a fossil --
"In a generation, you have to consider various alternatives to achieve this," said Simon Aylin, a representative of SaltX, during a visit to the facility . ".
"This is a solution available in a short period of time.
"Engineer Roeglin waited until the end of the year to see how the test was carried out.
"It could be part of the puzzle," he said . ".
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