ARC Discovery Project funding success

Wednesday, 19 November 2014

Professor Erich Kisi and Dr Thomas Fiedler have been awarded more than $355,000 in ARC Discovery Project funding commencing in 2015 for their research project High Energy Density - High Delivery Rate Thermal Energy Storage.

Australian Research Council (ARC)

About the project

This project aims to address the intermittency of renewable energy sources using novel thermal storage media. Advanced heat transfer modelling and in situ neutron diffraction and imaging are intended to be used to optimise the microstructure of newly developed miscibility gap thermal storage systems. The new media store energy as the latent heat of fusion of one phase in a stable, high thermal conductivity inverted microstructure. The high energy density of the latent heat (0.5 - 4.5 Mega Joules/Litre) requires storage volumes as little as five per cent of those relying upon heat capacity and the metal matrix has a hundred-fold greater thermal conductivity than current systems. It is proposed that a range of such materials will be engineered for concentrated solar thermal and space heating applications.

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