Stacked Thermal Storage With Hydrostatic Flow Equalization
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Solution Overview
Problem
Existing energy storage devices, such as batteries and capacitors, are limited in their ability to store large amounts of energy at reasonable costs, and pumped storage plants require significant topographical features, making them unsuitable for widespread implementation, while heat storage devices offer a cost-effective method to store electrical energy as thermal energy but face inefficiencies due to uneven fluid pressure distribution across heat exchangers.
Innovation Solution
The heat storage device employs a collecting tube filled with liquid to equalize pressure drops across heat exchangers, ensuring uniform fluid flow and efficient energy transfer, eliminating the need for additional flow-control devices like pumps or throttles, and utilizing a gas/liquid separator to optimize vaporized fluid handling.
Engineering Contradictions & Design Principles
Engineering Contradiction Analysis
1Productivity
If liquid working fluid is supplied to stacked heat storage units through a distributor pipe, then thermal energy can be stored in multiple units simultaneously, but uneven fluid pressure distribution causes non-uniform flow rates through heat exchangers
Solution Approach 1:
The distributor pipe is designed with an upward slope from the inlet toward the heat exchangers, creating a gravitational potential gradient that compensates for pressure losses. This ensures that the sum of gravitational potential energy and pressure energy remains constant along the fluid path, resulting in uniform flow rates through all heat exchangers despite their different elevations
Solution Approach 2:
The pipe geometry parameters (slope angle, elevation profile) are specifically optimized to transform the pressure distribution into a uniform flow distribution. By changing the spatial parameters of the distributor pipe, the system achieves equipotential flow conditions without additional control devices
2Volume of moving object
If heat exchangers are positioned at different elevations to stack thermal storage units, then space utilization improves, but pressure drops vary across heat exchangers causing inefficient energy transfer
Solution Approach 1:
The distributor pipe creates equipotential flow conditions by balancing gravitational potential differences with pressure differences. The upward slope design ensures that fluid reaches all heat exchangers with appropriate pressure despite elevation variations, maintaining efficient heat transfer across all units while utilizing vertical stacking for compact space utilization
Solution Approach 2:
The system transitions from horizontal to vertical arrangement of heat storage units, utilizing the vertical dimension for compact stacking. The distributor pipe compensates for the introduced elevation differences, enabling efficient three-dimensional space utilization without sacrificing heat transfer performance
3Manufacturing precision
If additional flow-control devices like pumps or throttles are installed to equalize pressure, then flow uniformity improves, but device complexity and costs increase
Solution Approach 1:
The distributor pipe's upward slope design enables the system to self-regulate flow distribution using gravitational potential energy. The geometry itself performs the flow equalization function that would otherwise require external control devices, eliminating the need for pumps, throttles, or other active flow-control components
Solution Approach 2:
The invention extracts the flow-control function from separate mechanical devices and integrates it into the passive geometric design of the distributor pipe. By removing complex active control components and replacing them with a simple sloped geometry, the system achieves flow uniformity with minimal complexity
Applied Scientific Principles
This section explains which scientific principles are used to turn an abstract innovation direction into a practical engineering solution.
Function Achieved in This Case
This configuration allows for homogeneous thermal energy storage and transfer across all heat exchanger units, enhancing efficiency and reducing costs by maintaining uniform flow rates and pressures, thereby optimizing energy storage and retrieval processes.
Implementation Method 1
the collecting tube is filled with a liquid and a vapor outlet is located in an upper region of the collecting tube, through which evaporated working fluid, which rises through the liquid in the collecting tube, can be discharged
Implementation Method 2
evaporated working fluid, which rises through the liquid in the collecting tube
Implementation Method 3
heat exchange tubes of a heat exchanger absorb heat energy from the heat accumulator body, wherein working fluid passed through the heat exchange tubes is vaporized
Implementation Method 4
at least one electric heater from each heat storage unit converts electrical energy into heat energy
Data Source
Figure 1~2
Figure 3~4
Figure 5~6
AI summary
A thermal storage device which converts and stores electrical energy into thermal energy comprises a plurality of thermal storage units stacked on top of one another, a manifold for supplying liquid working fluid to the thermal storage units, each thermal storage unit having at least one electric heater for converting electrical energy into thermal energy, at least one thermal storage body for receiving and storing of thermal energy of the electric heater and a heat exchanger with heat exchange tubes for absorbing thermal energy from the heat storage body and for evaporating working fluid that can be conducted in the heat exchanger tubes, and a collector pipe, which is connected to the heat exchangers, for discharging the working fluid evaporated in the heat exchangers, the collector pipe is filled with a liquid and in an upper portion of the header pipe is a vapor outlet through which vaporized working fluid flowing through the liquid in the header ear rises, can be derived. A method for operating such a heat storage device is also described.