A systematic review on liquid air energy storage system

Liquid air energy storage (LAES) has emerged as a promising solution for addressing challenges associated with energy storage, renewable energy integration, and grid stability. Despite current shortcomings, including low round-trip efficiency, poor economic performance, and limited engineering applications, LAES still demonstrates significant potential, particularly in short-term large-scale energy storage and renewable energy power integration, thanks to the high energy storage density, lack of geographical limitations, and minimal environmental impact. Previous review papers predominantly addressed advancements in thermodynamics and economics but overlooked key aspects such as dynamic performance and sustainability. Additionally, these review papers heavily emphasized system simulations, neglecting the research progress in experimental studies. Furthermore, the summaries of advancements in LAES subsystems were insufficient. This paper fills the gaps mentioned above and provides a comprehensive overview of LAES technology, covering its development history, comparison with other energy storage technologies, and research progress of LAES subsystems, standalone LAES systems, and hybrid LAES systems. Despite these achievements, key challenges remain, including high initial investment costs, complex technical requirements, and low operational efficiency, which collectively constitute barriers to the widespread adoption of LAES technology. This paper also identifies current research shortcomings and provides recommendations for future research directions. Further research and development of LAES technology are essential for alleviating fossil fuel shortages, environmental pollution, and excessive greenhouse gas emissions, and for realizing the full potential of LAES and its widespread application in the renewable energy utilization and energy storage sectors.