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A comment on Giant 'sand battery' holds a week's heat for a whole town.

Re:Giant 'sand battery' holds a week's heat for a whole town by pfdietz on Wednesday March 13, 2024 @08:07PM (#39699103)
NREL's ENDURING sand battery, storing heat at 1200 C in quartz sand. Round trip efficiency using turbines is estimated at ~53%.

https://arpa-e.energy.gov/sites/default/files/2021-03/07%20D...

The IP has been licensed by Babcock and Wilcox, who are the source of the nifty compact fluidized bed heat exchanger.

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Re:Giant 'sand battery' holds a week's heat for a whole town by chiph on Wednesday March 13, 2024 @09:18PM (#39699616)
It's an interesting concept. Cheap. Doesn't take up a lot of space. Could be driven by a solar furnace.

My concern is whether the cyclone particle separator will do a good enough job - gas turbine blades don't like being blasted with grit. I expect they'd need a heat exchanger to be sure to get only clean gas driving the turbines.

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Re:Giant 'sand battery' holds a week's heat for a whole town by pfdietz on Wednesday March 13, 2024 @10:01PM (#39699898)
> Could be driven by a solar furnace.

Perhaps more interestingly, it could be driven by combustion of an e-fuel as a backup in case the sand becomes depleted.

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Re:Giant 'sand battery' holds a week's heat for a whole town by hanniabu on Thursday March 14, 2024 @12:30AM (#39700618)
> Cheap.

Until patents are involved

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