IEA SHC Task 42 / ECES Annex 29 – Working Group B: Applications of Compact Thermal Energy Storage

The IEA joint Task 42 / Annex 29 is aimed at developing compact thermal energy storage materials and systems. In Working Group B, experts are working on the development of compact thermal energy storage applications, in the areas cooling, domestic heating and hot water and industry. The majority of application projects were in the field of room heating and domestic hot water. In this article, an overview is given of a large number of applications. The storage technologies used in the applications are latent heat storage, open and closed solid sorption, liquid sorption and salt hydrates and composites thereof. On a broad front, a lot of progress was made in the development of components and systems, providing knowledge and experience regarding the design, numerical modeling, building, testing and economical assessing of components and storage systems. Most important findings are that the interaction of storage materials with the materials of components can be deciding for the technical feasibility, that a number of components, like reactor, heat exchangers and evaporators are less understood than initially thought and need more development, that the inclusion of storage materials in systems generate new challenges like the occurrence of non-condensable gases and thermo-mechanical effects and that standardized and simplified system approaches are needed.