PI: Carlos Romero
Co-PI(s): Sudhakar Neti
University: Lehigh University
Industry partner: N/A
This proposal is to conduct research to enhance and optimize the use of very lightweight glass-based aggregates in pervious concrete embedded with phase change materials for the better operation of power plant dry cooling towers. Water has come to be recognized to be a very scarce commodity and power plant cooling applications use very large amounts. Dry cooling towers are now considered for such applications despite their higher cost and poor performance when the ambient temperature is high. The current research work is aimed at mitigating the impact of the high ambient temperature on power plant performance with the use of phase change materials and cold storage (done at night time) resulting in larger power generation capacity during peak power usage times. Currently, the US Department of Energy (DOE) is funding research at Lehigh which focuses on using lightweight (Build-X) aggregates embedded with CaCl.6H2O (phase change material, PCM). Such aggregate is used in pervious concrete for an application where air flows through concrete panels for sensible and latent cold heat energy storage. The energy density (kJ of storage/m3 of volume) of the current aggregate has limitations. The current work is aimed at developing and testing glass-based aggregates (Arcosa) embedded with PCM to – (1) enhance the overall capacity (kJ/m3) of the PCM-embedded pervious concrete for energy storage, and (2) for the optimization of such cold storage systems. Experiments will be conducted in an airflow test system to evaluate and optimize the cold storage capabilities of different concrete modules. This project is scheduled as a 12-month project to be conducted jointly by faculty and researchers at Lehigh's Energy Research Center (ERC) and the Advanced Technology for Large Structural Systems (ATLSS) Research Center. The ATLSS engineers will take the lead role in preparing the pervious concrete modules with infused PCM, and the ERC engineers will lead the flow systems and optimization analysis. We expect to achieve an optimized, high-energy density cold storage system that will be useful for use in dry cooling towers.