Will the sand save the world? Not really, but its use could soon extend to large-scale power generation as well. The news comes from Finland :
According to what is learned, a company located about 230 kilometers north-west of Helsinki , in the city of Kankaanpää , houses, offices and the public swimming pool are already heated by thermal energy stored in a 7-meter steel container. filled with 100 tons of sand . The Kankaanpää sand battery is connected directly to the grid and works when electricity is cheaper. Here’s how it works:
The hot air blown through the tubes heats the sand in the steel container by resistive heating (this is how electric heaters work). The sand is thus capable of storing heat at around 500–600 degrees Celsius for months , so the solar energy generated in the summer can be used to heat homes in the winter. It can store up to 8 megawatt-hours of energy , which is the capacity of a large network scale lithium battery . The project was the work of the Finnish startup Polar Night Energy and the Finnish local utility Vatajankoski :
Very little energy is lost in this process, as long as the heat is not transported very far, he said. In theory, the stored heat could be used to drive a steam turbine to generate electricity , but this is far less efficient. ” The efficiency will be something like 20-25% ” they make. “Technologically speaking, there are no obstacles, but the economic case is more difficult to find than with heat-only projects” – they stressed . In this regard, we report below the links to some videos disseminated on the web:
#energy #sand #battery # high-tech
