Thermal Battery System for Energy Storage

The Thermal Battery system enables energy-intensive industries to effectively capture and store high temperature heat that would otherwise be lost, and dispatch it on-demand to other manufacturing processes with their facility – thereby reducing overall fossil fuel consumption and CO₂ emissions, and subsequently increasing value potentials and revenues streams.

Key components include a high-performance storage material, HEATCRETE®, that is cast into “smart” steel cassettes. The thermal energy (heat) is transferred in and out of the Thermal Battery by means of a heat transfer fluid (HTF). This fluid used to charge and discharge the Battery can be for example steam, thermal oil, gas, and more.

• Acting as a buffer, the Thermal Battery effectively balances energy within power generation or processing plants with high energy demand variability
• Can be directly integrated into water/steam cycles in power plants or manufacturing plants to improve flexibility and match output to demand
• System sizing from 10 MWh_th to several GWh_th
• System response from charge/standstill to discharge within seconds
• Discharge duration from minutes to multiple hours with provision of constant temperature to consumers
• Typical charging temperatures above 300 °C.
• Discharging temperatures from 420 °C to ambient (no danger of HTF freezing)
• Negligible parasitic loads
• Typical roundtrip efficiency of 97% in Thermal Battery
• Forecasted system lifetime exceeds 30 years of operation
• Thermal Battery based on fully recyclable, non-hazardous materials
• High energy density in Thermal Battery yields very compact footprint

Thermal Battery Systems™ can be applied across all manufacturing and processing industries with high-temperature energy requirements. This includes, but is not limited to, metallurgy, chemicals, petrochemicals, glass, food & beverages industry.

In addition, the Thermal Battery System™ enables increased Electrification of industry. By storing energy from low-cost excess renewable electricity, and dispatching it as steam to manufacturing processes, industrial players can improve cost performance, decouple their varying energy demands from availability and label their end-products as environmentally friendly.

1. Waste Heat Recovery (WHR) in industry and manufacturing
2. Power generation (renewable and conventional)
3. Electrification of industry and manufacturing

Business Case Steel Manufacturing (UK)

Exhaust heat (which would be otherwise lost) in steel manufacturing is converted into a value stream by storing and time-shifting delivery of high-grade heat that is subsequently rerouted to other energy demanding processes within the plant, thereby effectively reducing overall fossil fuel consumption.

Recovering and storing waste heat from process like a reheater furnace enables the provision of required steam to the mechanically driven vacuum degassing pumps. Integrating the Thermal Battery thereby renders backup equipment and hot stand-by systems obsolete.

The Thermal Battery supplies bursts of steam when required and reduces emissions, cost of operation & maintenance. Savings accumulate on today’s basis over 1,3 M EUR per year.

The WHRU, Thermal battery and steam generation solution can be realized for less than EUR 5 million. This allows free from any incentives a payback of less than 4 years.

Business Case chemical industry (NL)

Chemical production requires often a backup boiler which must be kept in hot standby in order to ensure a quick response time in case of emergency. Keeping the boiler hot requires a substantial parasitic consumption of natural gas.

The Thermal Battery can be used to supply steam for several hours while the main boiler ramps up from a cold start, thereby eliminating the need to keep it warm. The steam required to keep the Thermal Battery charged is comparatively minimal.

Elimination of parasitic natural gas consumption allows savings of approx. € 1.6 million per year with a CAPEX investment of approx. 7,4 M EUR.

• Reduction of primary fuel use (higher energy utilization per unit of fuel)
• Reduced consumption or elimination of primary fuels, such as natural gas, oil, biofuels etc.

• Improved availability and serving markets for products with a reduced CO₂ footprint
• Increased energy security and hedging against cost of fuel/cost of emission (CO₂, NOx, etc.)

The Thermal Battery technology has been extensively assessed and its performance fully verified by global certification body DNV GL.

In 2014-16 EnergyNest built and operated a 1 MWh demonstrator at the Masdar Institute (now Khalifa University) in Abu Dhabi, which effectively showcased the simplicity, durability and applicability of the technology under various operating conditions. The system was operated over more than 6,000 hours with an energy cycling profile resembling operation in a power plant, with outstanding results.
Article Science Direct: Long-term performance results of concrete-based modular thermal energy storage system

In 2018, a first free-standing commercial module was manufactured and displayed at the assembly site in Europoort, Rotterdam.

EnergyNest is the first company to successfully sell a Thermal Energy Storage (TES) solution for the purpose of provisioning an industrial facility with emissions-free high-grade heat for its manufacturing processes. This project, which is currently being executed at Eni’s Gela refinery, is an industrial milestone in its own right for European green tech.
Article Eni.com: A new battery for the Concentrated Solar technology

In 2019 EnergyNest was awarded the SME-I Horizon 2020 program (3% success rate of applicants) grant to execute a Thermal Battery project with the Austrian clay brick manufacturer Senftenbacher. Excess exhaust heat from the kiln is used to provide on-demand process steam supply for the brick forming process. The Thermal Battery time-shifts thermal energy from the evening and night shift to the morning operation. CO₂ emissions from the plant can be reduced by 1500-2000 tons/year, saving over 9 GWh of natural gas.
Article Ziegelindustrie International: EnergyNest and Senftenbacher set new standards for climate-neutral industrial production