Wed, 07 December, 2022
In the framework of the H2020 GEOSMART project, CEA-LITEN is responsible of the sizing of heat storage demonstrators that will be installed on two geothermal sites, KIZILDERE II in Turkey and Insheim in Belgium, as well as for the evaluation of their performance in real life. A steam accumulator and a phase change materials (PCM) storage will be installed at the KIZILDERE II site, and a pressurised water thermocline will be installed at the Insheim site.
The specificity of the Turkish site is to have a high brine (mix of water with mineral salts and non-condensable gases) temperature of 165°C and to use this brine directly in the process, without an intermediate brine/water exchanger. The PCM storage will be installed on a liquid brine circuit and the steam accumulator on a steam circuit. For this site, the major challenge is therefore to design thermal energy storage systems adapted to the particular conditions of the brine taken several kilometres underground.
For the PCM storage, the liquid brine is rich in minerals, with a high risk of deposition in the tubes as soon as the temperature drops, the minerals being mainly made up of silicate compounds whose solubility decreases with temperature. For this reason, CEA proposed several solutions to mitigate this risk, and a small-scale prototype will be tested at the CEA centre before the installation of the demonstrator on the KIZILDERE II site.
(This article has been published courtesy: CEA-LITEN)
The GeoSmart project has received funding from the European Union's Horizon 2020 research and innovation programme grant agreement 818576