Energy Dome
CO2 battery should solve the storage problem of solar farms
The gas bag is reminiscent of an inflatable hall.
© PR
Store renewable energies – completely without chemicals. That is what the Energy Dome from Italy promises. The greenhouse gas CO2 is supposed to absorb the energy.
The Italian company Energy Dome has collected the money for the market-ready development of a CO2 battery. It is intended to serve as a temporary storage facility for large wind and solar energy systems. Energy Dome promises that your battery will last 25 years without losing performance. This clearly differs the CO2 battery from lithium-ion batteries, the performance of which deteriorates after around a decade of use. The cost of storage should be about half as high as a lithium-ion battery with the same storage space, according to Energy Dome.
This is because the CO2 battery is an energy store, but uses a completely different process than conventional batteries. Energy Dome’s method uses CO2 gas that is trapped in a closed system. On one side there is an inflatable storage tank in which CO2 is stored in gaseous form.
When electricity is stored, a compressor begins to compress this gas until it becomes liquid. The energy is stored in the compressed CO2. The conversion losses due to process heat are also saved. If electricity is now required, the liquid is decompressed again with the addition of heat – a turbine is driven to generate electricity. According to Energy Dome, the planned CO2 battery has a storage capacity of around 200 MWh. It should be possible to increase the capacity without any problems. In contrast, very small systems should not be possible.
“Grid systems around the world need effective, inexpensive storage to combine with renewable energies,” said Claudio Spadacini, founder and CEO of Energy Dome. “We are excited to use this investment and agreement to accelerate the adoption of this pioneering technology. We thank everyone who made this announcement possible.”
CO2 does not tire
This system has several advantages. The actual storage medium, the CO2, does not tire during the process. The gas can change states forever. CO2 is also present in large quantities in the atmosphere. It is not a rare material and does not have to be mined in connection with environmental damage. The “soft” gas hardly reacts to this and does not damage the system, seals or pipes. At the end of the process, there is no toxic or harmful residual waste left.
However, there are also disadvantages to these advantages. A conventional battery has cathodes or anodes fatigue, but no other moving parts. The Energy Dome uses a compressor and a turbine – mechanical parts with a limited lifespan. Which, however, can easily be renewed. Above all, however, the gas storage system, which absorbs the CO2 at atmospheric pressure, requires a lot of space and a shell. The direct competition to the Energy Dome is not conventional batteries, but systems that store energy by liquefying the normal ambient air. The gas mixture of the ambient air requires a more complex process, but only the compressed part has to be stored in a system, the gas bag of the Energy Dome is not required.
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