Terrafore Technologies receives STTR funds to develop Energy Storage Models in IDAES platform – Next Generation Multi-Scale Modeling and Optimization Framework to Support US Power Industry
In July 2020 as part of the Release 2 Phase 1 DE-FOA-0002146, DOE awarded nine small businesses to develop technologies to Transform Future Fossil Power Generation. Terrafore Technologies being one of these nine companies selected to develop thermal storage mathematical models.
DOE has developed a software platform called IDAES (Institute for the Design of Advanced Energy System) which will be used to improve the efficiency and reliability of the existing fleet of coal-fired power plants while accelerating the development of a broad range of advanced fossil energy systems, including chemical looping combustion and other transformational CO2 capture technologies (https://idaes.org/about/overview/).
Terrafore Technologies will incorporate mathematical models at different levels of sophistication to evaluate the effectiveness of coupling emerging thermal storage technologies with these next generation coal FIRST fossil power plants by quantifying improvement in efficiency, flexibility, longevity, and responsiveness of coal fired plants. Earlier, Terrafore using its unique expertise in thermal energy storage had previously developed dynamic models of various sensible heat and phase change thermal storage technologies. These will be leveraged in this project.
Fossil fuels are projected to remain the mainstay of energy consumption, currently 80% of U.S. energy consumption, well into the next century. Consequently, the availability of these fuels, and their ability to provide clean, affordable energy is essential for global prosperity and security. However, large coal plants are not very responsive to quick changes in power demand, which is becoming necessary due to increase use of renewables.
For next generation coal plants to provide greater flexibility and respond to variable needs of dispatchable power, storing thermal energy is necessary to bridge the gap in slow dynamic response between the coal heater and fast response of turbine power generator. The need to make coal plants more responsive to changes in load is becoming more important because of the increased generation of renewable electricity.
Using renewable energy has definite environmental benefits. However, because of the diurnal variations of both solar and wind, there is uncertainty and gap between supply and demand. Storing energy as electricity in batteries is still expensive and utilities need alternate methods to respond to changes in load at various timescales from minutes to hours to days. Storing thermal energy which is three times less costly than electric batteries is an option. But capturing heat in concentrating solar power is more expensive. DOE has been looking at alternative ways to reap the benefits of low-cost thermal energy storage to improve the response of fossil plants.
One such project is the next generation fossil plants called FIRST – Fast, Innovative, Reliant, Secure and Transformative. These fossil plants will be smaller, agile coal power plants that convert heat to power more efficiently, are environmentally acceptable because they sequester or capture carbon-di-oxide, a greenhouse gas, are responsive because they use stored thermal energy to assist the coal fired heater to be more responsive to load changes.
To achieve these objectives, thermal energy conversion is done at higher temperature at about 700 degrees Celsius, uses supercritical CO2 as motive fluid in turbine. These turbines are compact, responsive and maintain their performance at even low loads. However, burning coal to heat the motive fluid is a slow process. Stored thermal energy can assist the coal fired heater by quickly adding or removing (storing excess heat) to or from the system to make it responsive to diurnal load change and changes in loads at various timescales – seconds, minutes and hours.
Terrafore working with Southwest Research Institute, experts in s-CO2 power cycles, will begin to mathematically evaluate the effectiveness of coupling emerging thermal storage technologies with various next generation coal FIRST fossil power plants by quantifying improvement in efficiency, flexibility, longevity, and responsiveness of coal fired plants. In Phase 2, plan is to add additional thermal energy storage technology models, evaluate the use of these with various power cycles to evaluate responsiveness and optimum size, and cost.
