Development of a modular thermal storage system for industrial waste heat

By Michael Ehring, Benedikt Bender, Wolfgang Bender, Sven Hadrian, Hansjochen Oertel, Elmar Pohl, Torsten Seidel

As part of the ‘ModulHeatStore’ research project, a consortium of companies and research institutions has developed a modular heat storage system for the efficient and economical storage of industrial waste heat at high temperatures of up to 1,200 °C. The system is based on a combination of sensible and latent heat storage systems. What is new about it is the combination of sensible and latent heat storage modules, taking into account their specific properties and advantages – such as charging and discharging characteristics, temperature stability, costs, etc. – as well as an interconnection concept for coupling the individual modules and an intelligent thermal process control system for integrating the storage unit into existing and new processes. Although heat storage systems for industrial applications are already available on the market, flexible standard solutions for storing process heat in high-temperature applications are hardly commercially available.