Life-cycle impact assessment of innovative cascade PCM based thermal energy storage solutions

Project Description

The thermal energy storage (TES) is a key component of concentrated solar plant (CSP) plants, ensuring flexibility and power dispatchability. TES, however, represents an important cost source in traditional CSP plants, accounting for about 12-17 % of the CAPEX, figures comparable with the cost of the whole steam power cycle. The TES unit (also including the full amount of molten salts for commercial CSP) accounts for more than 40% of the associated green house gas emissions in a life-cycle perspective. Therefore, to ensure more cost competitive and environmentally friendly CSP designs a cost reduction and efficiency enhancement of the TES unit are deemed.

One pathway for the next generation of concentrated solar plant (CSP) include advanced innovative high-density and high-temperature TES systems capable of providing a high degree of dispatchability at low cost and with much lower environmental burden than the state of the art. This thermal storage is based in the Phase Change Material (PCM) technology, with a cascade configuration that can reproduce the effect of a thermocline and integrates recycled metal wool in its nucleus providing hybridization possibilities by acting as an electric heater, transforming non-dispatchable renewable electricity such as photovoltaic (PV) into thermal stored energy ready to be dispatched when needed.

The aim of this thesis is to develop and implement life-cycle methodologies to assess the environmental impact of described TES solution and its integration within molten salts based hybrid CSP-PV plants also including benchmarking against alternative TES solutions. In doing so, the student will contribute to the Horizon Europe project HYBRIDplus.

Main Deliverables

The main deliverables of the project include:

Final project report and presentation comprising description of project, literature review, data management, LCA modelling technique (including main assumptions and equations), LCA and comprehensive impact assessment, and final suggestions.
LCA models: models and user guidelines / instructions.