Project Details
Projekt
Coordination Funds
Applicant
Professor Dr. Burak Atakan
Subject Area
Technical Thermodynamics
Energy Process Engineering
Energy Process Engineering
Term
since 2023
Project identifier
Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG) - Project number 525789443
The inexpensive, location-independent, and resource-saving storage of electrical energy is the central unsolved problem in the transition to fluctuating energy sources. One possible solution would be the emerging technology of Carnot batteries (CBs), where electrical energy is converted into heat by high-temperature heat pumps, which are then stored in inexpensive materials such as water, stones, or molten salts, and then converted back into electrical energy as needed, e.g., by means of steam turbines. The thermodynamic principle has been known for a long time, nevertheless there are so far no general methods for their design or their evaluation based on the fundamentals and the objectives. Carnot batteries are complex coupled, time-varying systems with a large number of components and degrees of freedom. Published efficiencies and costs are rarely verified or apply only to specific systems; integration into future energy markets is unexplored. The fundamentally new approach of this priority program (SPP) is the comprehensive inverse top-down design methodology, which, starting from the target variables (market) step by step towards the smaller, aims at the optimal design as well as optimal modes of operation, with corresponding cycles, storages, machines, and fluids (molecule), and in turn optimally combines these components - which have not been considered so far. Especially the working fluids and their mixtures are co-optimized with the process configurations and process parameters to find the technical and economical limits. The market needs and the limits of CBs is to be investigated by an interdisciplinary SPP team. By building up a new interdisciplinary community, a high methodological and content-related gain in knowledge is expected, which is transferable to further energy-technological questions. This will be done in the inversely arranged project areas, which build on each other and cooperate intensely: A - Carnot batteries in energy markets, B - Design of Carnot batteries, C - Components for Carnot batteries. The work of the SPP will be pooled and validated by a shared Carnot battery laboratory, which will be set-up within the coordination project and can be used by the participants of the SPP for validation of their models and for investigating the coupling of different interconnected parts of a CB. The cooperation and exchange between the participants will be coordinated, by organizing workshops, student exchanges, seminars, and includes the involvement of internationally renowned scientists from different disciplines. The management of research data will be facilitated and managed by the coordination project, as well as the communication of the results to the public.
DFG Programme
Priority Programmes
