EXPERIMENTAL ASSESSMENT OF A NOVEL ZEOLITE-BASED THERMOCHEMICAL STORAGE

Energy production is the fulcrum of economical, scientific and social development worldwide. Indeed, economic crisis, instability in the price of oil and gas, a difficult geo-political situation and a growing environmental conscience have favoured a massive introduction and development of renewable energy sources, which are clean, worldwide available and inexhaustible. In such a context is hence clear that, in the next future, there would be an increasing and urgent need for architectures built for better energy utilization, in the residential, industrial and mobility fields. Key component for a system created for efficiency enhancement is a thermal storage, to cover for the gap between heat generation and heat demand and to effectively distribute it through the various users. Until now, almost all the need for thermal storage has been covered through the use of sensible heat units, relying on water, sand or concrete as thermal vector. However, other possibilities have been studied in recent years, such as latent heat storage and thermochemical systems relying on chemical or sorption reactions [4]. Among such technologies, adsorption-based thermal storage presents the possibilities for a density enhancement that can reach a ratio up to 8, if compared to traditional sensible heat storage[4]. Current research on adsorption storage is mainly focused on materials, with different classes being analysed in search for a high energy density storable [5]. Only a few reports exist in literature of sorption storages and mostly related to "open cycles" systems. Aim of this paper will therefore be the experimental results of testing campaign on a prototype of adsorption storage employing AQSOA FAM Z02/water, which has been tested at CENTROPROVE of CNR-ITAE, both as hot and cold storage.