Analysis and assessment of novel liquid air energy storage system with district heating and cooling capabilities

Integrated energy storage system is essentially proposed to achieve higher exergy recovery through the storage and the recovery of the surplus electrical energy during off-peak and on-peak hours, respectively, while producing other commodities through the charging, storing and discharging processes. The cooling is provided by the use of a solid-gas sorption cycle, which has the ability to provide the cooling effect at different temperatures. The performance of the proposed integrated energy storage system is assessed using the first and second laws of thermodynamics. The proposed system is compared to a standalone energy storage system used to store surplus electrical energy without producing other commodities, to assess whether the integration of heating and cooling production systems in the proposed storage system make sense in terms of energy and exergy. Overall energy and exergy efficiencies are 72.1% and 53.7% for the case where the cooling effect is provided at a temperature of 0 degrees C, for 100% conversion of the sorption chemical pair. If the cooling provided at a temperature of -35 degrees C, overall energy and exergy efficiencies become 67.1% and 53.7% respectively. In general, the proposed integrated system has higher energy and exergy efficiencies than the standalone system. (C) 2017 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.