Performance and economy of trigenerative adiabatic compressed air energy storage system based on multi-parameter analysis

Abstract The trigeneration combined the electricity, cooling and heating makes adiabatic compressed air energy storage system (ACAES) popular as an energy storage technology. Based on thermodynamic analysis, this paper studies the influence on the system performance of four variable factors, including compression stages, expansion stages, water (heat storage medium) mass flow rates in charging process and discharging process to provide a guidance for the design of ACAES for different user demand. The results show that changing these four factors can achieve different energy output distributions in a very wide range (power supply ratio is 0.50–0.86, heating output ratio is 0.00–0.39, cooling supply ratio is 0.00–0.41). Simulation results also indicate that fewer compression and expansion stages are suggested for the cases requiring shorter running time. Furthermore, according to this study, less compression stages than expansion is good for electricity generation and more compression stages is good for cooling supply. And for large heating supply demand, less compression is suggest. Besides, the energy efficiencies for different configurations of trigenerative ACAES are also achieved which are changed from 0.62 to 0.87 and the best configurations with highest system efficiency are also presented. Finally, by economic analysis, the most economic condition is achieved.