Demonstrating Cost Effective Thermal Energy Storage in Molten Salts: DLR’s TESIS Test Facility

Abstract

The present paper gives an overview of a new test facility for molten salt thermocline storage systems and components, which is currently being constructed at DLR in Cologne. The paper also presents DLR thermocline-filler modelling and the potential of the novel storage technology compared to the two-tank state of the art molten salt storage. In this work, an extensive parametric study is combined with an optimization routine. The approach allows a better comparison since it finds only those storage configurations, which can directly substitute the two-tank system in a given power plant. Results show that, compared to the two-tank molten salt system, the thermocline technology achieves high exergetic efficiency at only slightly increased storage volume size and a huge decrease in salt inventory.