Thermal Energy Storage Innovation is Turning Up the Heat | Cleantech Group

Decarbonizing heavy industries will be one of the toughest nuts to crack for the next decade. Steel, cement, and iron combined account for over a fifth of global CO2 emissions and are notoriously difficult to decarbonize. Thermal energy storage (TES) can play a key role in decarbonizing these three sectors and other industries using high temperature heat.

Thermal energy storage (TES) is offering a new solution for decarbonizing heavy industries, such as steel, iron and cement. New materials and processes have enabled innovators to reach temperatures of over 1,000 degrees – the temperature range required to decarbonize hard-to-abate sectors, such as steel and cement, as well as power production. Lower temperature heat could be used in industrial applications, such as methanol or paper and pulp production, as well as in district heating.

TES systems use renewable power that is to be curtailed or sold to the market at a very low cost as an input, which is then stored by heating up materials with good thermal properties. It is not a new concept. Systems of concentrated solar power (CSP), which radiate heat to a receiver that uses molten salt, have existed for decades to transport and store electricity. In fact, there is a total of 6.8 GW of molten salt capacity installed across the world, but these technologies have historically been limited in temperature range and applications.

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