What are some lesser known types of energy storage technologies?

[Kristian1234]

Hi all

I am totally new to this forum, so I do not know whether this has been posted before, and if so I appologize and hope that you can direct me to that thread.

I am currently involved in a project regarding energy storage and I have found out that the major technology platforms are the following:

Batteries
Flywheels
Reversible fuel cells
Electromagnetic fields
Compressed air
Thermal energy
Pumped hydro
SuperCaps

My question is, if you know of some other types of energy storage technologies. It does not need to be fully developed and could be something that does not have a big potential now, but with some research could be a possible technology.

Maybe you have heard of someone researching in another area than the ones mentioned above?

Any suggestion will be appreciated

Regards

Kristian

 

[dlgoff]

It's not new but the nucleus of an atom has energy that can be tapped. i.e. nuclear power.
Some where there was a discussion about wave energy from the ocean.

P.S. Welcome to PF.

 

[xez]

This example is a subset of thermal energy, but it's a
bit distinctive in that the concept involves the load profile
shifting of heavy industrial processes to do more work
when there is a surplus of energy, and do less work
when there is no surplus, so the industrial output itself is
used as a 'battery' to even out the demand on the power
grid.
Heat (or cold, as the case may be) is one form. It has
gained some attention recently with respect to using
large 'cold store' refrigerated warehouses' temperatures
and heat capacities as 'storage' mechanisms for surplus
energy such as wind or solar power. When an excess of
instantaneously available cheap power from wind/solar
is available, the cold stores activate their refrigeration
systems and lower their temperatures consuming large
amounts of the surplus of grid energy. They become
a bit colder than necessary, and this excessively cold
state holds sufficiently long as they very slowly warm up
that the energy input to the facility can be reduced or
eliminated during peak load times on the grid when a
surplus of energy is not available.

Also there's chemical / biomass energy stored from
photosynthesis processes creating chemical energy that
can be used later.

There's kinetic energy other than a flywheel, for instance,
using regenerative braking of an electric car / train as
a generator converting the kinetic energy back into
electrical energy.

There's gravitational energy which would account for
tidal energy, and also the source for certain high energy
astrophysical jets, et. al.

There's the energy flux of charged particles e.g. from
the sun that are in motion, and this is something
that's considered for some kinds of possible spacecraft
propulsion.

There's vacuum energy and 'dark energy' which could
be responsible for the universe's inflationary expansion
or even the universe itself... :)

There are certain energies associated with phase changes
of materials that are important e.g. in steam power,
the hydrology cycles, et. al. heat of vaporization,
heat of fusion / crystallization, et. al.

There are quantum mechanical energy levels that
are important technologically as well as physically,
e.g. lasers.

There's stress/strain energy which could be related
to anything from a compressed spring to an
earthquake fault.

 

[ranger]

This is an article from science magazine. Your school should have access to their database. Here is the abstract:

Dielectric polymers with high dipole density have the potential to achieve very high energy density, which is required in many modern electronics and electric systems. We demonstrate that a very high energy density with fast discharge speed and low loss can be obtained in defect-modified poly(vinylidene fluoride) polymers. This is achieved by combining nonpolar and polar molecular structural changes of the polymer with the proper dielectric constants, to avoid the electric displacement saturation at electric fields well below the breakdown field. The results indicate that a very high dielectric constant may not be desirable to reach a very high energy density.

See:
Baojin Chu, Xin Zhou, Kailiang Ren, Bret Neese, Minren Lin, Qing Wang, F. Bauer, and Q. M. Zhang
Science 21 July 2006 313: 334-336

If you need more papers on electric energy storage then scientific journals are a great place to look.

 

[Kristian1234]

This is an article from science magazine. Your school should have access to their database. Here is the abstract:


See:
Baojin Chu, Xin Zhou, Kailiang Ren, Bret Neese, Minren Lin, Qing Wang, F. Bauer, and Q. M. Zhang
Science 21 July 2006 313: 334-336

If you need more papers on electric energy storage then scientific journals are a great place to look.

That was exactly what I was looking for. I have been through a lot of scientific journals, but cannot find anything particularly new. And now I am kind of stuck. It would really help me a lot if you have heard about anything remotely related to energy storage...

Thanks