Alok Kumar Ray
About Alok
Alok Ray studied mechanical engineering at Veer Surendra Sai University of Technology, Burla. He pursued his master’s degree at the Indian Institute of Technology Kanpur’s department of mechanical engineering, specialising in fluid and thermal science. Alok has also previously worked at Whirlpool of India Limited as a global project engineer.
Alok currently works as an Assistant Professor in the mechanical department at Veer Surendra Sai University of Technology, Burla.
Project details
Assessment and Comparison of Performance of Thermal and Electrical Battery for Renewable Energy Applications
The project targets to harness the excess electricity (or electricity spillage) generated by solar PV and wind power plants which will be converted into thermal energy, and in turn will be stored in a thermal energy storage system (Thermal battery). The thermal battery is envisaged to store heat at high temperatures (?900°C) and act as heat source for subsequent cogeneration applications. Conventional electrical batteries can store electricity for future usage but their low energy storage capacity and less durability pave way for the recent contender in the area viz. thermal battery. Electrical energy can be efficiently converted into heat and multiple options are available to store it. An overview of the high temperature thermal energy storage (HTTES) is presented below. Alkali-metal carbonate salts can be used for sensible heat storage at high temperature. There are following three systems available for the purpose viz. Raft thermocline, two tank and two media thermocline systems. Latent heat storage is a lucrative HTTES option. Several metals such as Copper (1084°C), Ductile Iron (1149°C) and their alloys, e.g., Yellow Brass (930°C) have melting points in the target temperature range. Several common salts such as NaF (995°C), BaCl2 (962°C) etc. can also be utilized for HTTES. Excess electricity can also be stored by thermochemical process consisting of a pair of reversible redox reactions. In the charging cycle, excess electricity converted into heat is utilized in an endothermic reaction. The excess heat can thus be stored in the products of reaction for a long duration without any energy loss issue. When required, the stored energy can be recovered by initiating the exothermic reaction between the products of the previous reaction. This project will investigate the above options of HTTES and find the most suitable one from performance and economic aspects to substitute electrical batteries for energy storage.
View full project details