A Techno-economic analysis of different energy storage technologies

Semester Project, available now

Aim

Energy storage technologies are widely investigated and used to increase the penetration of renewable energy. The idea is to store excess renewable energy into other forms of energy and release it when needed. Chemical energy storage is more suitable for large-scale energy storage. It involves power or biomass to chemical, chemical storage, and chemical back to power, namely power-to-X-to-power (P2X2P) and biomass-to-X-to-power (B2X2P). There are carbon and non-carbon fuels that can be used as the storage medium, such as methane, methanol, hydrogen, ammonia, etc. Many technologies are involved in the P2X2P and B2X2P processes, where the choice of technologies has a great effect on the cost and energy penalty of energy storage. In this project, a systematic analysis will be conducted to give an insight into the cost and energy penalty of different chemicals. All possible technologies to produce such chemicals and use them to produce electricity are considered. Some of them are listed below: Compressed H2 with PEMEC electrolysis (700 bar) Compressed H2 with Alkaline electrolysis (700 bar) Compressed H2 with SOEC electrolysis (700 bar) Liquid H2 with PEMEC electrolysis (-253C) Liquid H2 with Alkaline electrolysis (-253C) Liquid H2 with SOEC electrolysis (-253C) Hydrate storage Synthetic CH4 from liquid CO2 by co-electrolysis Synthetic Methanol from liquid CO2 by co-electrolysis Synthetic FT from liquid CO2 by co-electrolysis Synthetic CH4 from liquid CO2 and H2 Synthetic Methanol from liquid CO2 and H2 Synthetic FT from liquid CO2 and H2 Bio-E-SNG from biomass and electricity Bio-E-Methanol from biomass and electricity Bio-E-FT from biomass and electricity Bio-E-SNG from biomass Bio-E-Methanol from biomass Bio-E-FT from biomass Bio-E-SNG from biomass and electricity use all CO2 NH3 from air and H2 RSOC They will be compared with other energy storage technologies: Lithium-ion Batteries Other Batteries Hydro dam (100 m) Electro-thermal storage

Tasks

  • Literature review and collect the required information, such as volume and weight of storage, energy used in production and storage, and energy released.
  • Calculate energy used and produced per kg of storage
  • Calculate the cost of the round-trip process (P2X2P and B2X2P), USD/kJ of output energy

Skills

  • Background in energy-related fields. Energy storage is preferred.
  • Ability to do literature review
  • Results interpretation and report writing

Supervisors

Du Wen: du.wen@epfl.ch