Development of high temperature thermal storage for industrial applications

This topic aims to satisfy the need for decoupling the heat generation from the heat use in continuous or non-continuous industrial processes, in order to allow for heat exchanges between different industrial processes and so enable industrial symbiosis, or to generate heat during off-peak times and so provide energy demand flexibility.

In order to reach this goal all the following development areas need to be covered:

• Cost effective and new designs for high temperature storage of industrial heat, with minimal footprint. The large capacity storages in combination with long design lifetime, require the development of novel materials and designs.
• Development of materials and components: thermal storage materials, container construction, insulation technology, heat exchangers with aid of computational fluid dynamics.
• Integration and demonstration of the system at lab scale.
• Make a preliminary estimation of the future equipment cost for at least two industrial applications, to evaluate its economic potential.
• Make an analysis of the potential industrial applications and related benefits of the proposed storage system in EU27 and (if data are available) in the Associated States and, by extrapolation, at global level; a preliminary version of this analysis is expected already in the proposal. Define an exploitation strategy.
• Dissemination of the technical and economic benefits, notably (but not only) to the communities of the relevant Horizon Europe private-public partnerships.