SeleCO2

Project description

The purpose of the SeleCO2 project was to study a new type of electro-thermal energy storage process for large scale electric applications, based on transcritical CO2 cycles and ground heat storage. The key idea was to convert electricity to heat and store heat in the ground when electricity is cheap, and then convert heat back to electricity when power is needed.

The project brought together five partners: ENGIE (ENGIE Lab CRIGEN), BRGM, CEA (Liten), Enertime and IMFT. The total cost of the research project was €1,875k and the partners received a total grant of € 899k from the French National Research Agency (ANR).

As part of my role at Enertime, I was responsible for our activites in the project, and more precisely the design and modeling of the thermodynamic processes.

The main challenge of the project was to build an accurate transient model of the energy storage system, taking into account the physics of heat transfer in the ground heat exchanger and the dynamics of the transcritical CO2 cycles. It required to build, validate and combine several models of the subsystems.

Additional resources can be found on the project website: http://seleco2.free.fr/, or in the publication below.

Publications

[1] “Investigation of a Massive Electricity Storage System by means of a geothermal heat transfer process involving CO2 transcritical cycles”, F. Ayachi, T. Tartiere, N. Tauveron, S. Colasson, D. Nguyen, ASME ORC 2015 Conference, October 2015, Brussels, Belgium.

[2] “Thermo-electric energy storage using CO2 transcritical cycles and ground heat storage”, F. Ayachi, N. Tauveron, T. Tartiere, S. Colasson, D. Nguyen, 12th International Conference on Heat Transfer, Fluid Mechanics and Thermodynamics, 2016, Malaga, Spain.

[3] “Massive thermo-electric energy storage based on CO2 rankine cycles and ground heat storage”, F. Ayachi, N. Tauveron, T. Tartiere, S. Colasson, D. Nguyen, Applied Thermal Engineering, 2016.

[4] “Thermoelectric energy storage based on CO2 transcritical cycles: ground heat storage modelling”, E. Macchi, C. Colin, T. Tartiere, D. Nguyen, N. Tauveron, 1st European Seminar on Supercritical CO2 Power Systems, September 2016, Vienna, Austria.

[5] “Inclusion of CO2 Transcritical Heat-Pump and Power Cycles in a Massive Electricity Storage System”, F. Ayachi, N. Tauveron, T. Tartiere, D. Nguyen, H. Davarzani, E. Macchi, 1st European Seminar on Supercritical CO2 Power Systems, September 2016, Vienna, Austria.

[6] “Study of a Massive Electricity Storage System Based on CO2 Transcritical Heat Pump and Power Cycle and a Geothermal Heat Transfer Process”, N. Tauveron, E. Macchi, T. Tartiere, D. Nguyen, C. Colin, F.-X. Lacroix, 12th IEA Heat Pump Conference, May 2017, Rotterdam, Netherlands.

[7] «Bedrock diffusive hot storage for large-scale thermo-electric energy storage by thermal doublet »; D. Nguyen, E.G. Macchi, C. Colin, N. Tauveron, T. Tartière, Symposium of the International Society for Rock mechanics, June 2017, Ostrava, Czech Republic.

[8] “Experimental study of a supercritical CO2 heat transfer process included in ORC and heat pump cycles of a thermos-electric energy storage”, N. Tauveron, E. Macchi, D. Nguyen and T. Tartiere, ASME ORC 2017 Conference, September 2017, Milan, Italy.

Patent

System of electrical energy production and storage by means of a thermal doublet (BRGM - CEA - Enertime)