Experimental and Numerical Investigations of Different Reactor Concepts for Thermochemical Energy Storage

This paper presents two different reactor concepts, an external and integrated reactor, for thermochemical energy stores which are operating in an open process using ambient air for the heat and mass transport. In the external reactor concept the material charging and discharging is performed in a reactor separated from the material store whereas in the integrated reactor concept the charging and discharging take place directly in the material store itself. For both reactor concepts, the heat and mass transfer inside the reactor or the material store respectively, have been analyzed in detail by means of numerical simulations. Based on the theoretical investigations a reactor design and an operation strategy have been developed. At laboratory scale an external test reactor (approx. 20 l of storage volume) has been built and experimentally tested. The experiments have proven the concept of the developed reactor design. A high thermal performance during the charging and discharging process of the thermochemical energy store has been obtained.