Renewable Energy-Powered High-Temp Thermochemical Heat Storage for Industrial Heating Horizon Europe program Grant for ET researcher Dr. Abhishek Singh

Horizon Europe is the EU’s key funding programme for research and innovation. Together with a consortium, researcher Dr. Abhishek Singh of the Faculty of ET received a budget of 4 million euro. His project HERCULES introduces a novel breakthrough approach towards thermal energy storage of surplus renewable energy. This is possible via a hybrid thermochemical/sensible heat storage with the aid of porous media made of refractory redox metal oxides and electrically powered heating elements. 

The heating elements use surplus/cheap renewable electricity (e.g. from PVs, wind, or other sources) to charge the metal oxide-based storage block by heating it to the metal oxide reduction temperature (i.e. charging/energy storage step) and subsequently (i.e. upon demand) the fully charged system transfers its energy to a controlled airflow that passes through the porous oxide block which initiated the oxidation of the reduced metal oxide.

It is an exothermic process thus a hot air stream (> 1000 ^oC) is produced during this step which can be used to provide exploitable heat for industrial processes. The waste heat from the industrial process can also be utilized for partial or complete charging of the storage system depending on its temperature and availability. It can also provide heat to the district heating network thereby providing the synergy between the industrial and district heating systems. In this project, the storage solution would be developed for Steel and Recycling industry.

The proposed research will be conducted by an interdisciplinary consortium constituting leading research centers, universities, innovative SMEs, and large enterprises including ancillary service providers and technology end-users.