Sumitomo SHI FW fluidized bed technology – upscaling thermochemical energy storage to a commercial level
The global energy technology company and the Swedish technology company SaltX are partnering to upscale a new solution that can store ten times more heat energy with the same footprint compared to the conventional hot water storages.
Stockholm, Sweden:
One of the largest obstacles in using renewable energy efficiently is the possibility to store energy on a large scale. SaltX Technology AB has partnered with Sumitomo SHI FW (SFW) to solve this in terms of heat energy.
“The storage solution is like a “salt battery”. It is based on a basic chemical process with a very common material, calcium oxide produced from limestone, with enhanced properties by our nanocoating process”, explains Carl-Johan Linér, CEO of SaltX.
Simplified, when calcium oxide reacts with water, it turns into calcium hydroxide and releases heat. Respectively, when calcium hydroxide is dried, it absorbs heat.
SFW has designed a fluidized bed pilot reactor, which serves as the point of discharge, where the salt releases the heat. The new 100 kW reactor in SaltX’s new testing installation in Sweden, near Stockholm, combines the performance of SaltX’s patented nanocoated salt with SFW’s fluidized bed technology.
“SFW’s technology has huge potential to take the salt battery solution to the next, commercial level in terms of size, with high efficiency. Our reactor can mix the salt and the water vapour very effectively, which makes it superior compared to other technologies especially in very large-scale applications.”, emphasizes Timo Jäntti, SVP Technology and R&D at SFW.
The pilot will be commissioned at the beginning of 2021. As the next step, SaltX intends to further scale-up to discharge 1 MW of thermal power in a demonstration project.
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