Tag Archives: U.S. Energy Information Administration (EIA)

Solar and wind energy storage via food waste and carbon nanotubes

Scientists are researching devices other than batteries for wind and solar energy storage according to an Oct. 27, 2016 news item on Nanowerk,

Saving up excess solar and wind energy for times when the sun is down or the air is still requires a storage device. Batteries get the most attention as a promising solution although pumped hydroelectric storage is currently used most often. Now researchers reporting in ACS’ Journal of Physical Chemistry C are advancing another potential approach using sugar alcohols — an abundant waste product of the food industry — mixed with carbon nanotubes.

An Oct. 26, 2016 American Chemical Society (ACS) news release, which originated the news item, expands on the theme,

Electricity generation from renewables has grown steadily over recent years, and the U.S. Energy Information Administration (EIA) expects this rise to continue. To keep up with this expansion, use of battery and flywheel energy storage has increased in the past five years, according to the EIA. These technologies take advantage of chemical and mechanical energy. But storing energy as heat is another feasible option. Some scientists have been exploring sugar alcohols as a possible material for making thermal storage work, but this direction has some limitations. Huaichen Zhang, Silvia V. Nedea and colleagues wanted to investigate how mixing carbon nanotubes with sugar alcohols might affect their energy storage properties.

The researchers analyzed what happened when carbon nanotubes of varying sizes were mixed with two types of sugar alcohols — erythritol and xylitol, both naturally occurring compounds in foods. Their findings showed that with one exception, heat transfer within a mixture decreased as the nanotube diameter decreased. They also found that in general, higher density combinations led to better heat transfer. The researchers say these new insights could assist in the future design of sugar alcohol-based energy storage systems.

Here’s a link to and a citation for the paper,

Nanoscale Heat Transfer in Carbon Nanotubes – Sugar Alcohol Composite as Heat Storage Materials
by Huaichen Zhang, Camilo C. M. Rindt, David M. J. Smeulders, and Silvia V. Nedea. J. Phys. Chem. C, 2016, 120 (38), pp 21915–21924 DOI: 10.1021/acs.jpcc.6b05466 Publication Date (Web): August 30, 2016

Copyright © 2016 American Chemical Society

This paper is behind a paywall.