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The tanks to hold liquid CO2 will likely be a lot cheaper than compressed air tanks because the required pressure is much lower. But they are going to loose a l
by thescriptkiddie 9mo ago
The tanks to hold liquid CO2 will likely be a lot cheaper than compressed air tanks because the required pressure is much lower. But they are going to loose a lot of energy to cooling the gas and reheating the liquid. I would be surprised if the round-trip efficiency is higher than 25%.
- alwa 9mo agoThey claim 75% efficiency AC-AC [0], and they point out that there’s no degradation with time. What estimates are you using to arrive at the 25% figure? [0] https://energydome.com/co2-battery/ https://energydome.com/co2-battery/
- thescriptkiddie 9mo agoi didn't do any math tbh, i just took the 25% number from the wikipedia page for cryogenic energy storage. i assumed their efficiency would be lower of the smaller temperature differential, but maybe it will be higher because they are storing part of the energy as pressure rather than temperature
- upofadown 9mo agoThe energy used to liquefy the CO2 is the bulk of the energy stored. They don't throw it away afterwards. The the liquid-gas transition is why this works so much better than compressed air.
- thescriptkiddie 9mo agoof course they are not throwing the energy away. but by using a working fluid that changes phase they are trading away energy efficiency for power density, for the same reason that steam engines are less efficient than stirling engines.
- kumarvvr 9mo agoHeat from compression is stored in a thermal energy storage system. Most likely something like a sand container.