World's first 'sand battery' can store heat at 500C for months at a time. Could it work in Australia?


The idea of storing heat in sand to warm homes through winter may, on the face of it, seem too simple to work.  Drop a load of cheap builder's sand in an insulated silo, heat the sand with renewable electricity, and then tap the stored thermal energy for months on end. In an age of green hydrogen, lithium-ion batteries and other high-tech energy solutions, it can't work, right?

Finland begs to differ. This month saw the Nordic nation launch the world's first commercial "sand battery".  About 230 kilometres north-west of Helsinki, in the town of Kankaanpää, homes, offices and the public swimming pool are being heated by thermal energy stored in a 7-metre steel container filled with 100 tonnes of sand.

So how does it work, what else can it be used for, and should we build them in Australia?

'It's really a typical silo'

The Kankaanpää sand battery is connected directly to the grid and runs when electricity is cheapest.  Hot air blown through pipes heats the sand in the steel container by resistive heating (this is how electric heaters work).  The sand is able to store heat at around 500–600 degrees Celsius for months, so solar power generated in the summer can be used to heat homes in the winter.  It can store up to 8 megawatt-hours of energy, which is the capacity of a large, grid-scale lithium battery.  The project was the work of Finnish startup Polar Night Energy and a local Finnish utility Vatajankoski.

Polar Night Energy's chief executive officer Markku Ylönen said the entire battery could be built in "any steel workshop". "It's really a typical silo with nothing that special," he said.  To discharge the stored thermal energy, air is circulated through pipes in the sand where it's heated, then directed, to wherever it's needed.  Right now, that's mostly heating homes, but it could also be used for high-temperature industrial processes, Mr Ylönen said.


"Or it can be directed to a steam drum to generate industrial steam at 200C, which is quite common in industrial processes."

Very little energy is lost in this process, so long as the heat is not being transported very far, he said.  In theory, the stored heat could be used to drive a steam turbine to generate electricity, but this is far less efficient.  "The efficiency will be something like 20–25 per cent," Mr Ylönen said.  "Technologically speaking, there are no obstacles, but the economic case is harder to find than with heat-only projects."

What can it be used for?

Australia doesn't have the same domestic heating requirements as Finland, but there's plenty of potential for using stored thermal for industrial processes, said Andrew Blakers, director of the ANU Centre for Sustainable Energy Systems.  "There's an enormous storage market for these things and that is to replace gas in factories," Professor Blakers said.

"[Stored thermal] can be used for everything from food processing, to parts of the aluminium industry, to parts of cement manufacture, iron and steel, ceramics and plastics."

About 16 per cent of Australia's emissions are due to burning of gas in industry for processes needing high temperatures (anything above 100C).  Heat pumps (the same technology used by reverse cycle air-conditioners), which can be powered by renewables, max out at about 100C, meaning they can't replace gas for these industrial uses.  But thermal storage can deliver temperatures of more than 1,000C, depending on the storage medium.  You choose the storage medium to suit the temperature of the process," Professor Blakers said.  Sand is just one option. Others include crushed rock and molten salt.

Thermal storage 'cheaper than gas'

The idea of thermal energy storage, including the sand battery concept, has been around for years.  So why are we only building these heat batteries now?
Firstly, for many years it's been cheaper to burn gas to generate high temperatures.  Secondly, due to heat loss, thermal energy can't be transported as easily as pressurized gas, which can make it trickier to use.  But recently the economics have changed.

Russia's invasion of Ukraine has disrupted the supply of gas to Europe and other markets. In the first quarter of 2022, European gas spot prices were five times higher than in the first quarter of 2021.  These high prices led to Australian gas producers exporting their gas, rather than selling it domestically, driving up prices in Australia.

Thermal storage has become cheaper than burning gas for high-temperature industrial processes, Professor Blakers said.  "In the past three years, the price of solar and wind has fallen so far, and [in the past few months], the price of gas has gone through the roof.

"Suddenly, conditions have turned completely upside down, and I now imagine most factories are looking at thermal storage."

But factories looking to switch to thermal storage won't be able to simply pipe in heat, like they do with gas.  Instead, they'll have to build their own thermal storage silos and heat them with cheap daytime solar electricity, from their own rooftop systems or the grid.  "A few thousand cubic metres of storage would be enough to keep a factory running," Professor Blakers said.  Or factories could wait for gas prices to fall.  "I think they'd be nuts if they waited," Professor Blakers said.  "Nobody can predict where the gas price will go, but the one thing you know is daytime solar electricity is going to stay at a low price."

What's next?
The Australian start-up 1414 Degrees has developed and patented a thermal storage system similar to the Finnish battery, but using molten silicon to store heat instead of sand.

It recently teamed up with another company, Vast Solar, to plan a solar thermal project in South Australia.  Swedish public utility Vattenfall is also building a 200MW-rated thermal energy storage in Berlin.  The heat storage tank can hold 56 million litres of water, which will be heated to 98C to warm homes.
Polar Night Energy has had plenty of interest in building more sand batteries, with the war in Ukraine putting the focus on alternative energy sources and storage methods, Markku Ylönen said.

Recently Moscow suspended the supply of gas and electricity to Finland due to its request to join NATO.  The next battery will be 100 times bigger, or about 20 metres in diameter and 10 metres high, with 1GWh of energy, Mr Ylönen said.  "With the economies of scale, if we go 100 times bigger, the price won't be 100 times larger. It will be 20–30 times larger.  "It will be in Finland, but we are already negotiating several sites internationally."
Once the first of these larger designs is built and tested, others could be built rapidly, he said.  "I would [eventually] like to say that we are building 10 next year."

The source, with many pics I did not post here.

A large quantity of scrap iron stores heat almost as well as water. 

If you had a volume of 1 cm³ of each material:

Water will have a mass of 1 gram and can store about 4.18 J of heat per degree Celsius.
Iron will have a mass of 7.87 grams and can store about 3.54 J of heat per degree Celsius.
Sand will have a mass of 2.2 grams (about) and can store about 0.703 J of heat per degree Celsius.

The proper billionaire bunker would have an underground silo filled with iron balls about six inches in diameter.  A solar collector would heat air to 50 degrees C or more, and blow it into the bottom of the silo.  Heat is transferred to the iron balls as air passes through.  The silo has a diameter on the order of three meters and is three meters tall.  Imagine a giant jar of Jelly Beans.  Residential heating pulls air through the the silo as needed for heating.  A second silo could have night air blown through it to provide air conditioning in the daytime.

I was thinking of building a thermal ballast under the house consisting of six inch cobble stones in a wood box about ten feet square. (Years Ago)  A solar collector would charge it with hot air at the bottom, and air for house heat would be drawn out of the top of the wood box.  All that is needed is solar power and enough electricity to blow low speed fans to provide air flow.  Solar power to operate the thermal charging air flow is an obvious choice.

The fluid tubes are eliminated if air is used.  I would have built an insulated duct from the air channel that replaces the fluid tubes to the bottom of my box of cobblestones.  The duct would be fan driven.  Speed controlled to keep the introduced air hot when the solar collector is active.  At night a damper isolates the duct from the solar collector.

But what would have been the point?  Mrs. Dog would have seen it as a total waste of time and money.  A ten foot square box of rocks that could cause a divorce, and then I would not be in the house.

Cultural hegemony kills many a dream.

When someone is high on hopium they like to say there are all kinds of solutions 'if people only had the will to carry them out'.  Usually when they say this BS I think their fingers must stink from the shit they are pulling from their ass.  But solving building heating issues by thermal storage is one of the imagined fantastical solutions that actually exists.

Quote from: K-Dog on Apr 14, 2024, 09:43 PMA large quantity of scrap iron stores heat almost as well as water. 

If you had a volume of 1 cm³ of each material:

Water will have a mass of 1 gram and can store about 4.18 J of heat per degree Celsius.
Iron will have a mass of 7.87 grams and can store about 3.54 J of heat per degree Celsius.
Sand will have a mass of 2.2 grams (about) and can store about 0.703 J of heat per degree Celsius.

Due to its very high heat capacity, for the purpose of home heating water works great.  You can store a lot of heat in a small volume, which is fully filled with the liquid.  With sand or iron balls, besides the lower heat capacity/gram, you have the issue that there is a lot of air space between the balls or grains of sand, depending on how fine the grains of sand or small the balls.  So it takes a lot bigger volume to store the same amount of total heat.

The problem with water for purposes other than home heating (like producing electricity or running a pump) is the phase change to steam (vapor) at 100C/212F.  Once it changes to a gas, the heat capacity drops off the map.  It essentially gives up all the stored heat in the phase change from liquid to gas.  So if you want to store heat at the temps that are efficient for industrial processes or generating electricity, you need either a solid or liquid that doesn't change phase until it reaches 500F or more.  Sand is good because it comes cheap, though the crushed rock/gravel probably works better with a smaller total volume.  Mercury might be a choice, but it would be expensive and mercury is poisonous as all get out so you wouldn't want so much of that shit around.

In any event, according to the article on sand, well insulated it could hold heat between seasons, but you would need a huge thermal mass to hold a winter's worth of heat.  Like a mountain. lol.  I think this type of storage is limited to the day/night cycle.

RE

What did I say about a new energy tech every day?  Today's feature: Green Hydrogen!

Yes folks, since the folks at BMW apparently have concluded they'll never be able to get enough grid power for their 444 HP muscle cars, they are going to power them instead now with hydrogen produced by renewable energy sources, no carbon.  The internal combustion engine is not dead: burn hydrogen, only water out the tailpipe.

What's the over-under on this tech taking off?

https://www.ecoticias.com/en/carmakers-new-engine/1022/

Carmakers say goodbye to EVs: this is the new engine that changes everything

RE

Maybe BMW will build the new Green Hydrogen ICE Muscle Carz from the new Miracle Material that replaces metal, plastic, cement and wood in everything from cars to machines and buildings!  Listen to this hype about the magical new Galvorn:

Recently, a group of scientists has succeeded in describing an exceptionally strong material that promises to surpass both steel in strength and aluminum in lightness. This breakthrough not only opens the door to technological innovations, but could have a significant impact on reducing carbon dioxide production.

Being lighter, it would allow the construction of more efficient infrastructures in terms of consumption and lighter in various applications, thus contributing to mitigating once and for all the environmental footprint associated with the manufacture of buildings and large architectural projects made with highly polluting materials.

We are talking about Galvorn, a material that has already been approved by the specialized materials development company DexMat, which confirms the above statements, making it clear that this new material could be implemented in industries such as construction, automotive and aviation, due to its multiple benefits.

Back in college in the 70s I remember reading about Buckyballs and Carbon Nanotubes and how they were going to revolutionize materials science and engineering.  A half century later, apparently the grandchildren of Russian scientists Radushkevich and Lukyanovich, the scientists working long years in the basement of their Moscow apartment have at last taken their ideas and created NTCs, or negative temperature coefficient thermistors which besides doing your dishes and walking your dog also are eco-friendly and will sequester carbon from methane, thus also resolving global warming and climate change.  With a name ike that, how could this material be anything short of the miraculous magic bullet we have all been waiting for?

Nothing in the article of course about where all the methane is going to come from to make the Galvorn or how much energy and money it takes to make a kilo of the stuff, but those are just minor details to be worked out later.

https://www.ecoticias.com/en/industry-metal-carbone-nanotubes/1024/

Farewell to metals in industry forever: the material that science fiction predicted and has just been produced

RE

OK, now I know why it's BMW that is going after Hydrogen powered ICE engines as the new, new solution to a carbon free transportation fleet  The engine type they are talking about is the horizontally opposed configuration, which BMW uses in its motorcycles.  I had one back in the 70s, a horizontally opposed twin, air cooled in those years, the BMW R100RT.



There is nothing special about this engine design that makes it better for hydrogen than the in-line configuration.  It's advantage in motorcycles is it has less vibration and gives you a smoother ride.  However BMW long experience playing with this engine using different size cylinders to generate power probably gave them an idea on what would work best with hydrogen as the fuel.  So they probably took some of their older engines and tested them and found a good one to use,

Far as hydrogen being a "new" fuel just discovered, that's ridiculous.  The only thing new is that as it has become cheaper to generate electricity with renewables, it's coming closer to the cost of using fossil fuels as they get more expensive.

This IS a means of powering even big rigs without carbon, as long as the juice is generated by wind/solar/hydro/nuke.  You also can rapidly refill the tanks.  So where is the problem?

It's the fact hydrogen is a gas, and to have enough of it on board your vehicle it either has to be highly compressed or in liquid form, which takes temps close to Absolute Zero.  The 2nd method is impractical for small vehicles like cars.

The 1st method is practical, but a compressed hydrogen tank in a car accident is a freaking nightmare waiting to happen.  When the valve breaks off, the tank blows out like a missile, the gas all mixes with air and POW, hollywood style explosions on the freeway.  How they figure to deal with this little safety problem I have no idea.

The other problem is the infrastructure of filling stations and big compressed hydrogen tanks at every convenience store to have a supply on hand to sell to the happy motoristas.  Then the big compressed gas supply trucks, and finally tankers with super cooled hydrogen moving around as well.  All of the have to be built.  We have LNG tanks that could be adapted, but not enough of them to handle a whole fleet of cars and trucks powered this way.  It will take a while to manufacture all that and get it in place.

Will this fit into the mix to keep the techno-futurist dream alive?  It's conceivable, but time is short I think to get it done.

https://www.ecoticias.com/en/hydrogen-engine-united-states/1088/

The engine that is turning the United States upside down: it is 80 years old and runs on a fuel that we have just invented

RE

Here's today's entry for new battery tech.  Quick charge sodium.

https://techxplore.com/news/2024-04-sodium-battery-capable-rapid-seconds.html

Researchers develop sodium battery capable of rapid charging in just a few seconds

RE

Quote from: RE on Apr 19, 2024, 02:27 PMOK, now I know why it's BMW that is going after Hydrogen powered ICE engines as the new, new solution to a carbon free transportation fleet  The engine type they are talking about is the horizontally opposed configuration, which BMW uses in its motorcycles.  I had one back in the 70s, a horizontally opposed twin, air cooled in those years, the BMW R100RT.



RE

Had mine in this decade. Loved the thing. Sold it right as Covid arrived.

Basically, this is Iron Man Tony Stark's "Repulsor Technology" that allows him to fly around in his suit and knock bad guys across the room by facing his palm toward them.  The suit carries no fuel for rocket motors or compressed gasses, it just is powered by a miniature "arc reactor" that produces gigawatts of energy, presumably electromagnetic.

This is all bad sci-fi of course,nothing remotely like it exists...UNTIL NOW!  At least according to Dr. Charles Buhler, a seasoned NASA engineer and co-founder of Exodus Propulsion Technologies.  If it works at all, my guess is it somehow interacts with earth's magnetic field to generate propulsion.  If that is the case, it wouldn't work in interstellar or even interplanetary space, which is the primary thing such a holy grail type of propulsion system would be useful for.

Basically it's the anti-gravity force used as a contrivance in practically every sci-fi movie that has everything from small "land speeders" to massive spaceships that magically float up off the ground without using the action-reaction principle of Newton's 2nd Law.  It's right up there with Time Travel as a sci-fi staple that has zero basis in physics to justify it, yet just recently also some physicist claimed to have shown time travel to be possible also.

Desperation makes even really smart people grab hold of any glimmer they can see of hopium.  Really smart theretical physicists find their glimmers in the wildest sci fi they read as kids, and try to make it true.  So far, no.  But who kknows, maybe this time, right?

https://interestingengineering.com/innovation/nasa-veterans-propellantless-propulsion-drive-defies-laws-of-physics

NASA veteran's propellantless propulsion drive defies laws of physics

RE

QuoteNASA veteran's propellantless propulsion drive defies laws of physics

This is the second article in a row on 'tech' you found which does not describe the physical principles underlying what is being talked about.

A long time ago I realized everything people do involves 'burning' of something.  Modern civilization is only a hundred different ways to make fire.  Burning is energy extraction, I have a broad definition.  Changing a small about of rest energy into motion one way or another.  Harnessing the heat release from  E = MC^2.

Everything we do is uses electromagnetic energy on the atomic scale.  A thousand different ways to do it disguises that any underlying tech is always brain dead simple.  Fancy and different behavior emerges on a macro scale, but reduce whatever it is down to basics, and simple processes are revealed.  But hopium tech articles never talk about any underlying physical principles involved.  It would destroy the bullshit.

New car engines that blow away the performance of everything we have are published every few years.  But how much can you improve expanding gasses in a metal tube against a piston really?  Car engine articles always use a hat trick of some kind to get around the fact that that all you do is expand gasses in a metal tube.

The Carnot cycle describes the maximum possible performance of expanding gasses in a metal tube no matter what engine you are talking about.  Steam, Diesel, Gasoline, or Sterling engines which use expanding air.  All these engines expand gas in a metal tube against a piston resulting from something being burned.  None of these engines can do magic.  The Carnot cycle puts hard limits on  what can be done.

The whole is more than the sum of its parts.  A robot can dance.  A robot can walk.  But all that happens is electric motors move things.  Electric current in magnetic fields making a force.  Ask how any robot works and 'electric current in a magnetic field creating a force' describes the basic principle.

My point is that the principles behind all modern tech are simple, not mysterious, easily understood, and there are not so many principles to understand.  Tech is related to art.  Engineers are artists who use the physical properties of the universe as their color palette.  Scientists discover the principles, and when they are not discovering they teach to others.  The discovering part of the job can turn into into mental masturbation and discovering new stuff is hard work.  Consequently teaching has to be part of the job.  Peak oil in America was in the 70's.  Peak scientific discovery of new physical principles was in the 1700's.  Teaching has to be part of the job of scientists or the process of discovering can turn into a process of useless eating.

From this to this. 

  ====>   

Both are pigments on a surface.  The sailboat is 'more' because we make it so.  But on the atomic level all we have are collections of atoms on a pallet, that are transferred to a canvas.

What is the underlying principle of repulsor tech.  What new color is on the palette?  Current through wires in a magnetic field?  Spinning wheels that go round and round? Love potion number nine?  Kinky sex with Robert Downey Jr?  What is it?  Where is the secret sauce.

Inquiring minds want to know so bad, that I think someone who would write an article without describing the underlying physics is an asshole.

Hopium must pay well.

Quote from: K-Dog on Apr 24, 2024, 11:26 AMWhat is the underlying principle of repulsor tech.  What new color is on the palette?  Current through wires in a magnetic field?  Spinning wheels that go round and round? Love potion number nine?  Kinky sex with Robert Downey Jr?  What is it?  Where is the secret sauce.

Inquiring minds want to know so bad, that I think someone who would write an article without describing the underlying physics is an asshole.

Hopium must pay well.

Here's your answer.

https://hackaday.com/2024/04/25/the-myth-of-propellantless-space-propulsion-refuses-to-die/

The Myth Of Propellantless Space Propulsion Refuses To Die

RE

QuoteMeanwhile True Believers flock to the 'Alt Propulsion Engineering Conference' (APEC), as no self-respecting conference or scientific paper will accept such wishful claims.

The after party could be freaky.

Looks like the competition for ICE Hydrogen as the power source savior is heating up.  This is actually the 3rd different design I have seen reported.  The article also says the engine can burn either hydrogen or gas, whichever is available.  That's a new claim.

IF enough solar/wind/hydro/geothermal/tidal/nuke power is brought online, even without full grid connection and IF all the infrastructure for clean hydrogen production, storage and distribution is built,  this would enable our current level of technological lifestyle to go on.  Hydrogen packs enough energy to run the big fast SUVs, the Jet planes and the container ships.  It can heat all the homes and use the same NG pipelines currently in existence.  About the only problem it doesn't solve is all the juice necessary for the AI and Data Centers, but if they have their own dedicated generators that run on hydrogen, it solves that problem too.

The main problems I see are with the economics, the resources to build all the infrastructure and the time available to get all this done.  The technology though is straightforward and not sci-fi hopium so it will be interesting to see how this plays out.

https://www.ecoticias.com/en/new-massive-hydrogen-engine/1333/

This is the new massive hydrogen engine: 3-liter internal combustion engine for more than just cars

RE

Yet ANOTHER ICE design for hydrogen from AVL, an Austrian auto tech company.  Interesting how all these companies are coming forward at the same time with their designs.  Obviously, they have all been working on them for a while, one of them (I think BMW) was ready to put it into production and announced it, then everybody else comes flying out from behind the cloak & dagger world of the design boards of industrial manufacturers to capitalize on the hype and not get left behind as Venture Capitalists start sprinkling out cash for further development of their favorite model.  BMW being one of the biggest and arguably technologically the best automotive engineering companies in the world doesn't need money from venture capitalists, but I'm sure AVL could use some extra Euros to try and compete with them.

In AVLs case they're talking 400HP as opposed to around 150 HP in the last one, which puts it right up there with the Muscle Cars of the 1960s like the legendary Oldsmobile 442.



Nobody fucking needs 442 HP for a car to drive to work or go shopping or even a vacation, the only reason for this kind of power in an engine is either for a racing car or for a semi that has to pull 20 ton loads.  That is usually done with diesel engines which are big, heavy and very robust because there is a lot of strain on all the parts of the engine and they have to last about 1M miles of use to get your money's worth out of them.  Reading between the lines a bit, AVLs engine is lightweight and uses aluminum and titanium instead of steel, so how well this engine would stand up to dragging 20 tons of beer over the Rocky mountains every day from the Coors bottling plant is an open question.  The article speculates its use in motor racing, but unless there is a consumer application also, auto racing by itself doesn't justify tooling up to build these engines.

The big question therefore is the economic one, how much will one of these engines COST when mass produced for a consumer level car, presumably at a somewhat scaled down HP rating?  All of the designs sound significantly more complex than a standard ICE gas model, and even more still than a diesel which doesn't even need spark plugs.  More strokes, higher compression ratio, higher temperatures, computer control of fuel injection,  plus having to store the fuel as a compressed gas all will drive the price tag up pretty high I imagine.  If you consider how long it has taken them to bring EVs to market at a semi-affordable price, it's hard to imagine that say even BMW could have a consumer level car rolling off the production line in Stuttgart in less than a decade.  They're also not going to start building them until the green hydrogen is being produced in greater volume at a lower price, which also will take a few more years to occur.  Timing is a big issue here, as well as in which direction the development money and the engineers are directed by the money men.  So much money and time has already been spent developing EVs as the solution to the transportation problem that they're not going to abandon that idea, which means the money and brainpower wil be divided between the two methods, which while not mutually exclusive do require differentt types of infrastructure and supply chains be developed.

So, bottom line here is that although technically Hydrogen powered ICE vehicles provide a plausible solution to maintaining the transportation systems of our modern techno-civilization without carbon and in a renewable fashion, practically it doesn't seem likely to succeed.  Just have to see how it develops though.

https://www.ecoticias.com/en/400-hp-hydrogen-engine-water/1118/

The latest 400 hp water engine: better than all hydrogen and the end of electricity

RE

QuoteAlthough technically Hydrogen powered ICE vehicles provide a plausible solution to maintaining the transportation systems of our modern techno-civilization without carbon and in a renewable fashion, practically it doesn't seem likely to succeed.

Just like an electric car.  Take a water car and park it on the black asphalt of an out of business mini-mall.  Draw a chalk line around it.  Park a Tesla next to it and do the same thing.  You have just drawn a circle that defines zero emissions for both cars.  Hell draw one big circle around both of them. 

Now bow to the north, south, east, and west chanting.  Carbon free cars.  Do a tap dance.  Sing a happy song.

Enjoy yourself, and be like the half million Tesla fools who think they are saving the planet.  But do not think too deeply about this.  If you do you might harsh your mellow.  Do not think that drawing circles on a sphere enclose two areas not one.  The area inside the circle is finite.  And it is carbon free.  The area outside the circle is also finite.  That area is the rest of the planet, and no more than that.  That area is not carbon free.  That area has to supply the hydrogen.

As of 2022, more than 95% of global hydrogen production is sourced from fossil gas and coal.  Considering energy losses converting fossil fuels into hydrogen, a water car may wind up being the dirtiest car of all.

Where are you going to get the hydrogen.


You might as well be walking on the sun. 

'So don't delay, act now, supplies are running out
'Allow, if you're still alive, six to eight years to arrive
'And if you follow, there may be a tomorrow
'But if the offer's shunned
'You might as well be walkin on the sun

'You might as well be driving a fossil car