The world’s largest demonstration plant for a new kind of renewable energy storage is up and running in the west of the China. Called liquid-air energy storage (LAES) the plant uses renewable electricity to compress air to extreme densities until it turns to liquid. It can then be rapidly released to power a turbine and discharge that green energy back into the grid.
this is an old idea through, decades ago when i subscribed to Scientific American a front cover atory was about an idea was to use abandoned underground mines for massive compressed air storage that could be released to spin a turbines when needed. i e a battery
good to see the Chinese having a go though
Compressed air storage already exists. That’s different from liquid air storage.
How so? Its higher pressure, but still just compressed air storage. They use the energy released during decompression to generate electricity.
It’s spinning turbines alllllllll the way down!
So a different kind of steam.
In a way I would say it’s pretty different, right? At room temperature, water needs a lot of energy to turn and keep turning into steam, while at first glance it would seem that air could be kept liquid at room temperature (of course after using energy to compress it) without using (much?) energy, then release that energy in a useful form when you need it.
I was joking about the “it’s always just steam” in energy production.
This here is just inverse steam for storing.Got it! Inverse steam is a good way to describe it.
Meanwhile, US cuts NSF funding.
They really want China to win.
They ‘won’ a long time ago, you just are now seeing them starting to get ahead.
… is up and running in the west of the China.
No. “in Chinas’ west ?” or " … ?" idk.
When electricity is plentiful, it powers machinery that draws in air, compresses it and cools it to extremely low temperatures of around -190°C. At this point, the air becomes a liquid, taking up far less space than it did as a gas.
No. Liquid fractions of gases from air readily separates. So O2(l), N2(l), Ar(g), and many other, each being much more valuable alone. Helium for example is very expensive.
(So, economically speaking, only the nitrogen should be expanded back to retrieve stored energy.)
in my opinion, this article could have been much better even if written by artificial intelligence.
Compressed air sounds like a good long term energy storage option since the losses over time must be pretty low.
There are a couple kinds of CAES. The best ones (“advanced” methods like adiabatic and isothermal) can have 70-80% roundtrip which is pretty good – and much better than the 40-60% that “conventional” CAES is good for. Like many other things it could definitely have its place in a heterogeneous mix.
