A research team led by Dr Jonathon Elvins, Senior Technology Transfer Fellow at Swansea University’s Faculty of Science and Engineering, found that adding inorganic PCM spheres into sensible heat storage (water) increased storage capacity, thereby reducing building carbon emissions by up to 22 per cent.
“The exact composition of the PCM spheres is confidential,” said Dr Elvins. “We chose them to be inorganic to assess their long-term durability, and because their phase transition temperature was in the correct range for the [860L/18kWh] tank.
Dr Elvin’s team at the University’s SPECIFIC (Energy Technology Research & Demonstration) Centre has been carrying out experiments to find the ideal combination of charge rate and density of PCM spheres to maximise the amount of energy stored. Their research has so far achieved an increase of up to 72 per cent in energy storage.
“We were working with charging and discharging to simulate commercial and public sector building use,” he said. “Charging at 2kW and 4kW, discharging at 2kW, 4kW, 6kW, 8kW and 10kW.”
The experiments at Swansea University were commissioned by Aneysha Minocha, founder and CEO of Quantaco, a software platform that accelerates, simplifies and cuts the cost of decarbonising public sector and commercial property portfolios at scale. It does this by providing tailored investment-level options for various carbon-saving options, including heat storage.
From the Swansea team’s findings, a thermal storage model has been developed allowing the prediction of energy storage at a 30-minute frequency, providing close accuracy with obtained data. Scenario modelling using the developed model as part of a larger Quantaco model has shown the use of renewable technologies on an operational building can reduce its carbon emissions by as much as 22 per cent.
“Heat decarbonisation is an important element in the UK's Net Zero journey, and phase change material has a key role to play,” said Minocha. “Our recommendation to clients will be that phase change material is an evolving technology, and we recommend that they consider PCMs as part of their suite of solutions.”
Dr Elvins added: “Thermal storage will be a key enabling asset in the transition from traditional to decarbonised space heating. It has been exciting to demonstrate, at scale, the substantial increase in usable thermal energy by moving from a sensible thermal store to a hybrid sensible/latent thermal store.”
The research was funded by an SBRI, Net Zero Heat and Power grant from Innovate UK.
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