Materials, processes and structures to reduce thermal loses and aid energy storage and recovery at Ultra-High Temperature

The project will focus on the investigation of how energy from renewable sources can be input, stored and extracted from a material at extremely high temperatures. This becomes increasingly important with the accelerated adoption of renewable energy sources as significant contributors to the electrical grid. Renewable sources such as wind and solar produce an output which has significant temporal and spatial variation and thus there is a requirement for some mechanism to match supply with demand.

High thermal losses at high temperatures have restricted the development of large scale thermal energy storage devices. This project will, therefore, seek to develop techniques which manage the high radiative heat losses in order to realise an ultra-high temperature thermal energy storage solution with higher energy density than conventional methods. This comes with the benefit of mitigating some of the issues with current grid-scale storage concepts: the use of rare materials, limited deployment locations and cycle degradation.

The project may consider the development of a suitable containment vessel, thermal loss management system and the operation of a commercial system for varied conditions.