Energy 45 (2012) 407e415

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Energy
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Electrothermal energy storage with transcritical CO2 cycles

Mehmet Mercangöz*, Jaroslav Hemrle, Lilian Kaufmann, Andreas Z’Graggen, Christian Ohler
ABB Switzerland Ltd., Corporate Research, Segelhofstrasse 1K, 5405 Baden, Switzerland

a r t i c l e i n f o a b s t r a c t

Article history: A novel type of bulk electricity storage e electrothermal energy storage (ETES) e is presented. The
Received 14 September 2011 concept is based on heat pump and heat engine technologies utilizing transcritical CO2 cycles, storage of
Received in revised form pumped heat in hot water, and ice generation and melting at the cold end of the cycles. The paper first
10 February 2012
describes the growing need for large scale electrical energy storage and the role of storage in the inte-
Accepted 5 March 2012
gration of renewable intermittent generation such as wind energy into the electricity network. The
Available online 10 April 2012
background and a short review on ETES is given and the main principles of (i) reversible1 heat pumping
using vapor compression, (ii) thermal energy storage, and finally (iii) back conversion of thermal energy
Keywords:
Energy storage
into electricity via a thermal engine are explained. Following the introduction of ETES as a general
Thermal energy storage concept, the transcritical CO2 based system is presented by providing a description of the thermody-
Transcritical CO2 heat pump namic cycles and the corresponding operating conditions. Next the overview of an envisioned tran-
Renewable integration scritical ETES plant is given with information on the main equipment including the turbomachines such
as compressor and turbine, high pressure plate heat exchangers, and ice storage. Key properties of the
proposed transcritical ETES system are then reviewed with an emphasis on energy storage efficiency,
scalability, site-independence, and minimal environmental impact. Information about the operating
characteristics such as start-up and standby times and storage duration of the proposed system is also
given. The paper is concluded by discussing the future perspectives for the proposed system mainly by
focusing on potential technology improvements for the CO2 machines and the storage materials for both
hot and cold ends of the system.
Ó 2012 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

1. Introduction
Electrical energy storage systems are a means to balance power
demand and supply, maintain grid frequency and power quality,
and ensure that power remains available for critical loads when
power outages occur. Beside this variety of functions there are also
different technological solutions for energy storage. The main focus
of this article is on the so called bulk or large scale energy storage
where the involved power is of the order of tens to hundreds of MW
and the storage duration of the order of hours. This type of bulk
energy storage is especially important for the integration of
renewable intermittent energy sources such as wind into the
electricity grid in a sustainable way. Due to the strong dependence
of intermittency of wind power on the specific geographic location,
and the role of interconnection strength, it is difficult to make
* Corresponding author.
E-mail addresses: mehmet.mercangoez@ch.abb.com, mercangoz@gmail.com
(M. Mercangöz).
1 conventional CAES technology needs to consume a heat source e in
The term reversible in this article is mainly used to refer to thermodynamic
cycles that can be operated in both clockwise and counterclockwise direction in the
space of thermodynamic state variables.
general claims but on the average the reserve power in an electrical
grid needs to be increased by about 200 MW for every 1 GW of
additional wind power installed in the grid [1,2]. This additional
reserve power can be provided by conventional power generation
units or by energy storage systems. In many instances around the
world the choice comes down to either building a new fossil fired
power plant or an energy storage system, with results of detailed
economic analysis considering capital expenditures, energy storage
efficiency, fossil fuel costs, and level of uncertainty in wind power
forecasting favouring or disfavouring energy storage [3]. Since the
notion of having to build more fossil fired power plants in order to
integrate more wind power is not an intuitive one, there is growing
attention on bulk energy storage.
The established technologies for bulk energy storage are pum-
ped hydro storage (PHS) and compressed air energy storage (CAES),
both of which exploit geographical storage means and hence con-
strained in their deployment. There is globally about 130 GW total
installed PHS capacity at 200 locations [4,5]. In contrast to that only
two CAES plants exist with 400 MW total capacity [6]. The
both plants provided by natural gas combustion e to reheat the
compressed air, corresponding to about 40% [7] of that of

0360-5442/$ e see front matter Ó 2012 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.
doi:10.1016/j.energy.2012.03.013
408 M. Mercangöz et al. / Energy 45 (2012) 407e415
a conventional gas turbine of equal power output. In general the
future deployment possibilities for PHS are considered to be very
limited both due to lack of suitable sites and also due to environ-
mental concerns typical of hydropower projects. The potential sites
for future CAES plants are more abundant but the reliance of CAES
technology on fossil fuels is a significant drawback. Research and
development for a new type of adiabatic CAES technology is under
way [8] which can eliminate the need to use fossil fuels but
significant advances in high temperature pressurized refractory
storage are needed to achieve this goal.
The purpose of this article is to unveil a new type of bulk elec-
tricity storage technology e electrothermal energy storage e that is
based on heat pump and thermal engine technologies utilizing
transcritical CO2 cycles, storage of pumped heat in hot water, and
ice generation and melting at the cold end of the cycles [9]. In
principle the idea of reversible heat pump and heat engine opera-
tion for energy storage is not novel and has been considered since
1924 [10,11] re-appearing after the oil crisis of the 1970’s [12,13]
and again recently in a different form [14]. The rest of the article
introduces the thermodynamic background of the new ETES tech-
nology with transcritical CO2 cycles and compares it to the previ-
ously suggested approaches to reversible heat pumping. Details of
the suggested design are given and discussed. Finally future
perspectives on this new technology are summarized.
2. Electrothermal energy storage
The oldest works close to the intent of the present article are by
Marguerre [10,11] and have not been translated to the English
language. Marguerre proposed, in 1924, a “thermodynamic” energy
storage unit where electricity drives an axial steam compressor,
and the energy is stored in condensed water at pressure, as is still
commonly used in some thermal storage applications including the
storage of solar heat for electricity storage [15]. In such a Marguerre
unit, the energy is stored partially in the form of heat and partially
in the form of compression work against the ambient pressure. The
first published concept for the storage of electrical energy solely in
the form of heat for back conversion to electricity is provided by
Cahn in a patent application from 1978 [12]. This concept also forms
the basis of what is defined here as electrothermal energy storage.
Fig. 1. A schematic representation of energy balances for a ETES system with ambient as the low temperature heat source.
In the following paragraph, the general concept of electric
energy storage based on two-way conversion of electricity to and
from heat is defined.
The working principle of a electrothermal energy storage system
is that during periods of excess electricity generation in the electric
network an electric driven motor drives the compressor of a vapor
compression heat pump system transferring electrical energy
combined with thermal energy from a low temperature source to
a high temperature heat sink and where either the cooled low
temperature heat source or the heated high temperature heat sink
or both are stored for a duration of time. During periods of excess
electricity consumption in the electric network a heat engine with
a motive fluid is operated to receive the stored heat from the former
high temperature heat sink to generate electrical energy in an
expansion turbine, where the expansion is driven by the discharge
of low temperature thermal energy into the former low tempera-
ture heat source. If heat is stored at only one temperature end of the
heat pump cycle either at the heated heat sink or at the cooled heat
source the counterpart that is not stored has to be a heat source or
sink external to the system which can be the ambient or a waste
heat source. In general, the entropy generation representing the
inefficiency of the system, meaning the amount of electrical energy
entering but not leaving the system back as electrical energy has to
be discharged externally. The previous definition was a general one
purposefully chosen to cover all possible cases of electrothermal
energy storage. For clarity the following example is given, which is
based on the most frequently used forms of heat pumps and heat
engines.
2.1. A simple example
A particular realization of ETES using the ambient as the low
temperature heat source can be visualized in a graphical represen-
tation common to most thermodynamics textbooks as shown in Fig.1.
In order to evaluate the arrangement in Fig. 1, the efficiency
limits of the thermodynamic cycles in the ETES concept need to be
examined. The most frequently used reference in the analysis of
thermodynamic cycles for maximum efficiency is the Carnot cycle,
which can act both as a heat engine and, when operated in reverse,
as a heat pump. The efficiency of the Carnot cycle can be expressed
based on the temperature levels (in Kelvin) of the hot and cold
 M. Mercangöz et al. / Energy 45 (2012) 407e415 409

reservoirs used in the operation of the cycle [16]. In order to roundtrip efficiency is equal to 1 if the heat transfer takes place
combine a Carnot heat pump and a Carnot heat engine for ETES over an infinitely small difference, meaning that the ETES
operation, the heat pumped to the high temperature during the system is thermodynamically reversible.
heat pump cycle can be written as:  Moreover it can be seen that the roundtrip efficiency quickly
declines once the reversibility is lost and the heat transfer
Thigh HP
Qhot ¼ Welc IN (1) starts taking place over larger values of TD. The influence is
Thigh HP  Tlow HP expectedly lower at higher storage temperatures.
where Thigh_HP and Tlow_HP indicate the high and the low operating  The less obvious trend that can be observed in Fig. 2 is the
temperatures of the heat pump, Welc_IN the electrical work input, influence of the ambient temperature level showing that the
and Qhot the heat delivered to the thermal storage. Next, the elec- lower the ambient temperature the higher the ETES efficiency.
trical work produced during the heat engine cycle can be written as: This is caused by a reduced coefficient of performance for the
! heat pump but an increased efficiency for the heat engine and
Thigh HE  Tlow HE indicates that the ETES roundtrip efficiency is more strongly
Welc OUT ¼ Qhot (2) influenced by the heat engine.
Thigh HE
 Increasing the hot storage temperature above 400  C does not
where Thigh_HE and Tlow_HE indicate the high and the low operating significantly increase the ETES roundtrip efficiency for a given
temperatures of the heat engine, Welc_OUT the electrical work heat transfer difference or ambient temperature.
output, and Qhot the heat received from the thermal storage. Based
on these equations the roundtrip efficiency can be formulated as This theoretical example neglecting the efficiency losses at
Welc_OUT over Welc_IN as: the electrical machines, turbines, pumps and compressors
! ! suggest that a ETES system can be built with relatively low heat
Welc OUT Thigh HE  Tlow HE Thigh HP storage temperatures and yet high roundtrip efficiencies given
¼ (3)
Welc IN Thigh HE Thigh HP  Tlow HP that the heat transfer is carried out over small temperature
differences and that a low temperature ambient around 5  C
When the temperature levels for the heat pump and heat engine can be found. Since all references to the ambient in the above
cycles are replaced with an ambient temperature TA, a finite example can be replaced with a closed cold storage system such
temperature difference TD for heat transfer, and a thermal storage as an ice storage e with a small glitch to be discussed below e
temperature TTES the ETES roundtrip efficiency can be rewritten as: the actual challenge is to find a realistic implementation, i.e.
  realistic thermodynamic cycles and working fluids, that will
Welc OUT ðTTES  TD Þ  ðTA þ TD Þ
¼ result in appropriate pressure ratios with high turbomachine
Welc IN ðTTES  TD Þ
  efficiencies, cheap and environmentally friendly thermal storage
ðTTES þ TD Þ materials high heat transfer efficiencies, and a suitable ambient
 (4)
ðTTES þ TD Þ  ðTA  TD Þ (or external heat source) to discharge the overall exergy losses
which cannot be avoided.
The expression in Eq. (4) can be used to plot the roundtrip
efficiency of a Carnot ETES as a function of TD and TTES for different
values of TA. Such a plot is provided in Fig. 2. 2.2. Matching of heat sources and heat sinks with realistic cycles
Several important conclusions can be reached from observing
Fig. 2: Carnot cycle and reverse Carnot cycle with isothermal heat
transfer processes can be closely approximated by Rankine and
 The first observation is that regardless of the hot storage reverse Rankine cycles, however a big challenge in ETES design is to
temperature TTES, and the ambient temperature TA, the match the cycle temperature profiles with those of the thermal

Fig. 2. Roundtrip efficiency of a Carnot ETES with ambient as the low temperature heat source at temperatures of 5, 10, and 30  C, forming the upper, middle, and the lower
efficiency surfaces.
410 M. Mercangöz et al. / Energy 45 (2012) 407e415
storage materials. In general two concepts of thermal storage exist
for utilization with ETES that are feasible by today’s technology.2
 Two tank fluid thermal storage as used in several solar thermal
power plants. The storage material can be a liquid like water or
an emulsion like molten salt resulting in a non-isothermal
temperature profile during heat exchange with ETES working
fluids. The biggest advantage of this type of thermal storage is
the possibility to use high efficiency heat exchangers, such as
plate heat exchangers on counter current operation. Temper-
ature span for this storage concept can be limited due to the
storage material reaching its boiling or freezing points.
 Phase change materials (PCMs) that result in an isothermal
temperature profile during heat exchange with ETES working
fluids. PCMs can be stationary or in the form of a pumpable
slurry but stationary PCMs generally result in variable heat
transfer rates during operation. Most frequently used PCM for
thermal storage applications is water with phase change
mainly towards ice e phase change towards steam is also used
but the high pressure confines these applications to smaller
volumes. PCMs with phase change temperatures above 100  C
present interesting opportunities for ETES design but systems
with efficient heat transfer which are also robust to numerous
freezeemelt cycles are yet to be developed.
To illustrate the issue of matching of the selected cycle to the
heat sources and heat sinks with which the cycle interacts, two
examples of possible mismatches are given in the upper frames in
Fig. 3. In the left case, the cycle delivers and retrieves heat from
a medium that stores the heat at constant temperature (e.g. as
latent heat in a phase change medium), but uses a working fluid the
temperature of which varies during the heat exchange (i.e. the
working fluid exchanges the heat in sensible form). During the heat
exchange the temperature of the phase-changing storage medium
stays constant, as indicated in the Figure by the solid horizontal
line. In order to transfer the heat from the working fluid to the
storage medium during charging, the working fluid temperature
must be above the storage temperature during the whole heat
transfer process and the cycle therefore must follow the black
arrows in Fig. 3. The work stored is the area encircled by the dotted
line in the upper left picture. However, in order to discharge the
stored heat, the working fluid must receive the heat from the
storage and therefore its temperature must be below the phase
change temperature of the storage material. The work retrieved by
such a cycle is the area enclosed by the dotted line in the upper
right picture.
Recollecting that in the T-s diagram an area enclosed by a cycle
is proportional to the work done by the cycle, it is apparent that the
work re-claimed from the storage, Wout, (discharging area on the
righ) is significantly smaller than the work input during the
charging, Win (area on the left). Such a mismatch between heat
sources and heat sinks leads to work losses even if the cycles are
ideal and reversible during charging and discharging.
The same holds for the right upper plot in Fig. 3. In the case
illustrated here, the working fluid undergoes a phase change during
heat exchange, whereas the storage is in the form of sensible heat.
2
Refractory bricks are widely used in the so called Cowper Stoves in the metals
industry for blast furnace operation with a very large temperature span at very low
costs but heat transfer to solids involves time varying operation with additional
limitations on heat transfer. High pressure working fluids can improve the heat
transfer but then the storage will need pressurization eliminating the cost advan-
tage of refractory bricks. It can also be possible to integrate an indirect heat
exchanger with large fins extending inside the brick structure but the cost
advantage will again be lost.
Therefore, the temperature of the working fluid is constant during
heat exchange, whereas the temperature of the storage medium
varies. As above, this causes a significant reduction of the work
output (Wout) compared with the work input (Win). Two examples
of a good match between cycle and storage material are given in the
lower part of Fig. 3 for sensible heat storage (left) and latent heat
storage (right).
The mismatches illustrated in Fig. 3 are extreme examples of the
so called pinch problem. A more common type of this issue is in
Fig. 4 showing the temperature profiles of the high temperature
isobaric process of Rankine (left) and transcritical Rankine (right)
cycles. It is illustrated that if the storage fluid does not undergo
phase change when it receives or rejects the heat from the working
fluid, then losses are generated if the working fluid does change
phase (boils or condenses) during this process. In both cases the
temperature profile of the storage medium (dashed line) is gliding,
and represents therefore storage of sensible heat to and from the
medium. In the left plot, the working fluid undergoes a phase
change during which the latent heat is received or removed at
constant temperature, giving the boiling and condensing temper-
ature plateaus. This generates a significant mismatch of the two
fluid states. A better match is shown in the right plot, where the
temperature profile of the working fluid is gliding as well, leading
to a closer fit of the two curves, thereby allowing for a higher
roundtrip efficiency.
2.3. Which thermodynamic cycles to use?
Conceptually any thermodynamic cycle that can be made to run
backwards can be used for ETES design. It is generally not even
necessary to have identical cycles and working fluids for charging
and discharging operations. As Rankine cycle examples one can
consider a heat pump with several compression stages that are
flash-intercooled, which is matched with a single stage expansion
heat engine, or a system with internal heat exchange during heat
pump operation heating the compressor inlet with the condenser
outlet but not having such an internal heat exchanger between the
turbine exit and the pump exit for the heat engine. The two
proposals for ETES by forerunners [12,14] in this area were to use
 Multiple pressure evaporation and condensation Rankine cycle
with water as the working fluid with steam extractions from
the turbine during heat engine operation and steam injections
during heat pump operation [12]. The variable pressure
condensation and evaporation at the high temperature side
forms a staircase that matches well with the proposed two tank
thermal storage with thermal oils. For the cold side the
working fluid itself is stored as warm water at atmospheric
pressure. The drawbacks of this design is that the turbo-
machine structure has to be quite complex since for high
roundtrip efficiency the number of extraction-injection stages
has to be increased considerably.
 Simple forward and backward closed Brayton cycle with Argon
as the working fluid and two-part direct contact refractory
storage pressurized up to 4.6 bars storing both the heat
received and rejected the cycles [14]. The main challenges in
this concept are: (i) for steady state operation the storage needs
to be oversized and cost of the storage will increase due to the
pressurization requirement, which is still not high enough to
improve the gas side heat transfer and (ii) the high back-work
ratio of the Brayton cycles result in increased energy losses in
the turbomachines.
In general the following key points were taken into account
when proposing the ABB ETES concept: 1) ETES should use a cycle
 M. Mercangöz et al. / Energy 45 (2012) 407e415
Fig. 3. Bad and good match between the cycle and heat sources/sinks. Bad match (upper two cases) reduces the roundtrip efficiency. Good match is on the lower two frames for
sensible heat storage (left) and latent heat storage (right).
that can be run as reversibly as possible in the heat pump and heat
engine mode; 2) The cycle must closely match the heat sources and
sinks with which it interacts; 3) The design aims at finding an
optimal combination of roundtrip efficiency and capital cost of the
storage system; 4) Environmentally benign materials are a strict
requirement.
3. Transcritical ETES with CO2 as the working fluid
Based on the above given criteria a simple transcritical CO2 cycle
was chosen as the preferred ETES concept. The cycle layout is
shown in Fig. 5 (the features of split stream tanks and ice storage
are described later) and the T-s diagram of the cycle is displayed in
Fig. 6. The Figures are based on the preferred realization of the
transcritical cycle with CO2 as the working fluid and hot water and
ice as the storage materials.
The distinct near-triangular shape of the cycle in the T-s diagram
in Fig. 6 is due to the different character of the heat exchange at the
low and high pressure ends of the cycle. On the low pressure side,
the heat exchange takes place at constant temperature, with the
working fluid undergoing a phase change within the dome bound
by the saturation curve. On the high pressure side, the working
fluid undergoes heat exchange in a supercritical process (the
combination of temperature and pressure is above the critical
point). At these conditions no phase change takes place and the
temperature profile is therefore gliding.
Following the cycle in the Figures during charging of the
storage, the cycle starts where the working fluid is compressed to
Fig. 4. ETES charging and discharging with Rankine (left) and transcritical Rankine (right) cycles.
411
reach a maximum temperature close to or above 100  C. The final
state of the compression lies in the supercritical region. Here the
working fluid enters the heat exchanger (gas cooler) in which the
heat is transferred to the storage medium. This occurs in a process
that takes place at practically constant pressure e the working
fluid flows through a heat exchanger in which the pressure does
not vary except for friction losses. Following the isobar, the
cooling of the working fluid in the supercritical conditions does
not lead at any point to phase change, i.e. the temperature of the
working fluid has a slope along the whole process (in contrast to
the isobars that intersect the two-phase cone of the diagram for
subcritical cycles).
At the end of the heat exchange the fluid expands in a liquid
expander. The expander produces work that can be re-supplied to
the compressor. If a throttling valve is used at this point instead of
a work-recovering expander, the expansion is an isenthalpic
process in which all the work that might be recovered is lost. The
working fluid is then at a low pressure, in preferably a liquid state
and ready to enter the evaporator to receive low grade heat in order
to close the cycle. This heat exchange process is isobaric, but takes
place in the phase change area, and therefore the temperature of
the working fluid is constant along this process.
For discharging the process is simply reversed, i.e. the liquid
working fluid is pumped from low pressure to high pressure and
receives heat from the storage in the gas heater. The working fluid
then expands in a turbine connected to a generator to produce
electric power. At the end of the expansion the working fluid enters
the condenser to refuse low grade heat and closes the cycle.
412 M. Mercangöz et al. / Energy 45 (2012) 407e415

Fig. 5. Sample plant layout during charging (left) and discharging (right) mode.

Considering the match of the cycle with the temperature
curves of heat source and sink, the transcritical cycle is suitable
for operation between a constant temperature heat bath on the
low pressure side and a gliding-temperature heat bath on the
high pressure side. The use of stream splitting as shown in Fig. 5
by the intermediate storage tanks allows changing the flowrate of
the thermal storage as seen by the CO2 during heat transfer to
counteract the curvature of the transcritical temperature glide. At
the low temperature side of the cycle, the constant temperature
due to a phase change during the heat exchange fits well with the
possibility to use large heat sources/sinks that operate at practi-
cally constant temperature, such as the ambient, large water
basins, ground etc. Alternatively, cold storage in a phase change
material can be considered e.g. an eutectic mixture of ice and
liquid water at 5  C. The gliding high temperature heat
exchange allows for storing the heat in a liquid medium in the
form of sensible heat. This allows for a simple manipulation of the
storage medium, namely for containing it in tanks and for an
efficient heat transfer in simple heat exchangers. Among liquid
storage materials, water is a very advantageous medium because
of its high heat capacity, its thermal properties, its excellent cost
and environmental as well as safety properties. To operate
a transcritical cycle between the temperatures that fit with water
as the storage medium, CO2 appears as the ideal option for the
working fluid.
3.1. Why CO2?
The preferred working fluid for the cycle is carbon dioxide (R744
in refrigerant nomenclature). This natural refrigerant has been used
in the early stages of refrigeration, but was later replaced by organic
working fluids. The issues of ozone layer protection and global
warming prevention has recently led to a strong revival of the
natural refrigerants, including CO2. Due to its thermo-physical
properties, namely its low critical point and its high power
density, CO2 is increasingly popular for water heating heat pumps,

Fig. 6. T-S diagram of the transcritical CO2 cycles.

 M. Mercangöz et al. / Energy 45 (2012) 407e415 413

car air conditioning, etc. A qualitative comparison of CO2 with other Table 2
common refrigerants is given in Table 1. Comparison of water with other storage media (data for 1 MWh heat storage) for
100  C temperature difference for sensible heat storage materials.
CO2 is characterized by its very low critical temperature, which
allows for implementation of the transcritical cycle at temperatures Material Water Sand (or rock) Thermal oil Erythritol (PCM)
that fit well with water as storage material. Furthermore, CO2 has Heat capacity, J/(kg$K) 4181 830 1670 e
excellent thermal properties, offers a very high power density, has Latent heat, J/kg e e e 339,800
Density, kg/m3 1000 1680 900 1480
excellent environmental properties, and it is non-flammable and
Spec. cost, USD/kg 0.0005 0.03 1 5
non-toxic (however it is a suffocating gas). Amount needed, kg 8610 43,300 21,550 10,600
The biggest drawback is the high absolute pressure of the Volume needed, m3 8.6 25.8 24 7.1
supercritical CO2. However, the high pressure level is due to the Cost, USD 4.6 1300 21,550 53,000
requirement of supercritical operation, rather than the properties
of CO2 itself. Compared with other working fluids, the pressure of
CO2 is actually among the lowest in the supercritical region. has clear advantages from the point of view of environment
CO2 has a low surface tension, which leads to reduced effects of friendliness, availability, toxicity, flammability, corrosiveness and
cavitation in the machinery, thereby allowing for compression and other chemical properties. One disadvantage of water is that it
expansion closer to the saturation curve. Furthermore, only small offers a relatively narrow temperature range, since it freezes at 0  C
compression ratios are required in the vicinity of the critical point, and boils at 100  C at normal pressure. These limits may only
which leads to high efficiency of the machinery. High density of CO2 partially be mitigated by additives that lower the freezing point on
near the critical region results in a large power density and one side, and pressurization to allow storage at higher tempera-
subsequently to compact equipment. Although machines allowing tures. Some fluids could allow for some increase of the temperature
for direct comparison are not available, in most applications the difference between the high and low temperature sides (using
compactness of the CO2 machines offsets the weight and cost different cycle), but the gain is typically only moderate, with the
increase due to the high pressure. alternative economic options limited to oils or molten salts, and the
The advantage of using a natural refrigerant with low global potential benefit seems to be in all cases offset by worse thermal
warming potential is expected to play an increasingly important properties, flammability, or other problems.
role in the future. After bans on ozone depleting CFCs, the use of
HFCs is increasingly regulated due to their global warming poten- 3.3. Ice storage
tial. In some countries (e.g. Denmark) regulatory surcharges already
practically double the costs of the fluids, and other regulatory The potential advantages of using the ice storage is increased
expenses need to be considered as well. Generally, it is not expected site-independence with minimum interaction with the ambient
that next generations of environmentally friendlier refrigerants (only loss heat, i.e. heat generated by the irreversible losses of the
under development can outperform currently used refrigerants, cycle, needs to be rejected from the system), reduction of back-
but will only offer better compromise between performance and work, increased temperature potential and therefore increased
environmental properties. storage utilization factor. The ice storage also increases the effi-
It is also worth noting that the ETES system is proposed as a zero ciency and reduces the relative losses in heat exchangers with the
leakage plant where the rotating machines will be equipped with increased temperature difference between the hot and cold sides
recompression sealing systems to capture any leaking CO2 and of the cycle. Furthermore, lowering the cold side temperature
return it back to the CO2 circuit. reduces the sensitivity of the roundtrip efficiency on “deforma-
tion” of the charging and discharging cycles. The positive impact
of the ice storage is largest in hot areas for which the ambient
3.2. Why water as a thermal storage material?
temperature is too close to the critical point of CO2. The preferred
ice storage technology is ice slurries, which can be obtained in
Liquid water has a very high heat capacity, which results in
several different ways. One of them is the so called evaporative
a high energy density of the storage in both volume and mass. A
ice making technology [17]. In this case the ice storage cycle
comparison of water with tightly packed sand as a representative of
needs to be integrated as a bottoming cycle to the transcritical
a solid storage material, oil, and erythritol as one of the most
CO2 heat pumping process.
popular phase change materials is summarized in Table 2.
A key point, as mentioned multiple times before, is that having
Water has a heat capacity that is almost five times higher per
an ice storage does not eliminate the need for interacting with an
mass compared to sand, which means that it can store the same
external heat sink to discharge the initial electrical energy that
amount of energy in five times less mass, or at a 5 times lower
cannot be back converted. The preferred method of discharging this
temperature difference. Due to the higher density of sand (or rock),
heat is an additional balancing ice making cycle, which will operate
water is about 3 times more efficient in volume. Water has also
during periods of low electricity demand e when the charging
excellent heat transfer and transport properties. Furthermore, it
cycle is running and when ice storage is being replenished
eoperating preferably with ammonia as the working fluid and
Table 1
Qualitative comparison of CO2 with other common working fluids.
contains a multi stage intercooled compressor and which eventu-
ally discharges at its condenser the residual heat corresponding to
Refrigerant R12 R22 R134a R290 NH3 CO2 the exergy losses into an external heat sink such as cooling water or
Natural fluid No No No Yes Yes Yes air. This way the discrepancy of the ice generated during the
ODP 0.820 0.055 0 0 0 0
charging cycle and the ice melted during the discharging cycle will
GWP (100yr) IPCC values 8100 1500 1300 20 <1 1
Critical temperature ( C) 112.0 96.2 101.2 96.7 132.3 31.1 be eliminated at the expense of efficiency losses due to the elec-
Critical pressure (MPa) 4.14 4.99 4.06 4.25 11.27 7.38 trical energy used in operating this auxiliary ice machine. Therefore
Flammable No No No Yes Yes No having a high coefficient of performance for the auxiliary ice
Toxic No No No No Yes No machine minimizes the efficiency penalty. The alternative is to
Relative price n/a 1.0 4.0 0.3 0.2 0.1
Volumetric capacity 1.0 1.6 1.0 1.4 1.6 8.4
continue the discharging process by carrying out the CO2 conden-
sation during heat engine operation with the external heat sink but
414 M. Mercangöz et al. / Energy 45 (2012) 407e415

Fig. 7. Efficiency and cost bands of the proposed ETES system as a function of power rating.

it is foreseen that the heat engine operation will be taking place
mainly during peak demand periods generally corresponding to
daytime when the temperature of such external heat sinks are
higher and their cooling potential lower. The switching of exergy
discharging to charging mode of operation instead shifts the elec-
tricity consumption penalty to times of lower electricity demand
and also more frequently to nighttime when the cooling potential
of these external heat sinks are higher.
3.4. Other cycle configurations
When a low temperature heat source, such as waste heat from
a thermal power plant is available, the heat pump operation of
ETES charging cycle can be carried out at an elevated pressure
and the power input requirement for a given power output is
reduced thereby increasing the roundtrip efficiency of the ETES
system. The system is a combination of a low grade waste heat
power generation and energy storage. Depending on the
temperature at which the waste heat is available the equivalent
storage roundtrip efficiency defined as electric output to electric
input can be boosted above 100%. The electric energy produced
from the low grade waste heat is presumably used at peak
demand, increasing the economic value of the waste heat
recovery. One has to note however that the amount of waste heat
required increases with the storage power and for the proposed
transcritical CO2 cycles their ratio is more than 5. Moreover as the
temperature of the waste heat and the roundtrip efficiency
increase the storage density in terms of stored electrical energy
per storage volume decreases due to the reduced electrical input
into the heat pump cycle. Finally incorporating the waste heat
also necessitates large amounts of thermal discharge into external
sources typical of any thermal power plant.
Other potential modifications to the thermodynamic cycles are
(i) internal heat exchange in the charging cycle between the
compressor inlet and gas cooler outlet, which enables further
cooling of CO2 before expansion, increasing the heat pump coeffi-
cient of performance and the amount of ice generation if ice storage
is used (ii) flash intercooling in the heat pump cycle, or interstage
heat storage if multistage compression is carried out, to be matched
with reheat steps in the discharging cycle. The original cycle [9], the
waste heat driven cycle [18], and stream splitting for thermal storage
[19] are also published as patent applications and more detailed
information on these topics can be found in these documents.
4. Thermoeconomic evaluation
Modelling and simulation activities are being carried out
continuously for evaluating the proposed system compared to
alternative energy storage technologies. A summary of results
obtained so far can be seen in Fig. 7, which indicates the strong
economies of scale presented by this power plant like storage
technology and a potential size for a pilot installation.
Detailed flow sheeting simulations were conducted for a pilot-
plant and a commercial size configuration with nominal powers of
1 MW and 50 MW, respectively (red dots in Fig. 7). Table 3 summa-
rizes the main baseline parameters used in the computations.
The charging and discharging operations of the ETES system
were modeled in Aspen HYSYS using thermodynamic data from
REFPROP [20]. The temperature of the water storage tanks and the
temperatures of the CO2 cycle, as well as the maximal pressure of
the heat engine cycle were independently varied in order to opti-
mize the roundtrip efficiency defined in Eq. (3). For the fixed
equipment performance values listed in Table 3 optimal parameter
combinations were identified using a CMA-ES evolutionary algo-
rithm [21]. For example, a maximal roundtrip efficiency of 53% was

Table 3
Baseline parameters used for the detailed flow sheeting simulations of the charging Table 4
and discharging operation of the ETES system for two different plant sizes. CO2 conditions for the charging mode simulated using the baseline parameters give
in Table 3 for the case “Pilot”.
Pilot Commercial
Turbine nominal power, MW 1 50 State Pressure, bar Temperature,  C Mass flow, kg/s Duty, MW
Turbine efficiency, % 86.0 91.0 1 32.4 2.8 14.7 e
Compressor efficiency, % 81.5 89.0 2 32.2 3.0 14.7 e
Expander efficiency, % 80.0 88.0 3 140.0 122.3 14.7 e
Pump efficiency, % 80.0 86.0 4 139.4 13.5 14.7 e
HEX min. approach,  C 1e3 1e3 1e2 CO2 evaporation (ice generation) 3.2
Maximal CO2 pressure, bar 140 140 2e3 Compression 1.1
Maximal storage temperature,  C 123 123 3e4 CO2 coolers (water heating) 4.2
Roundtrip efficiency, % 51 65 4e1 Expansion 0.1
 M. Mercangöz et al. / Energy 45 (2012) 407e415
Table 5
CO2 conditions for the discharging mode simulated using the baseline parameters
give in Table 3 for the case “Pilot”.
State Pressure, bar Temperature,  C Mass flow, kg/s Duty, MW
10 35.8 1.0 26.0 e
20 133.1 9.9 26.0 e [1] Roy A, Kedare BS, Bandyopadhyay S. Optimum sizing of wind-battery systems
30 132.5 118 26.0 e incorporating resource uncertainty. Applied Energy 2010;87(8):2712e27.
40 36.0 17.4 26.0 e [2] Nyamdash B, Denny E, O’Malley M. The viability of balancing wind generation
10 e20 Pumping 0.3
20 e30 CO2 heaters (water cooling) 7.6
30 e40 Expansion 1.3
40 e10 CO2 condensation (ice melting) 6.6
obtained for the 1 MW pilot-plant, using a split stream configura-
tion with 4 water tanks on the gas cooler/heater side at 19, 46, 77,
and 114  C respectively and a maximal pressure for the discharging
cycle of 132.5 bar Tables 4 and 5 give a detailed description of the
CO2 states for the case “Pilot” of Table 3. State points 1 to 4 in
Tables 4 and 10 to 40 in Table 5 correspond to the charging and the
discharging modes show in Fig. 5, respectively.
As discussed at the very beginning of this article almost all
alternative bulk electricity storage technologies display a certain
location dependence that can hinder their widespread deployment
that are not considered in the general cost vs. efficiency evaluation
shown in Fig. 7. Therefore the modest roundtrip efficiency esti-
mates of ETES, when combined with attractive capital cost esti-
mates indicate that ETES can become the bulk electricity storage
technology of choice. This is without considering the cost of storage
in terms of USD/kWh, where ETES has an even more attractive
standing and also without considering its environmentally benign
and site independent nature. Other ways of utilizing the ETES
technology (e.g. primary frequency control) are also being investi-
gated. The fact that the marginal storage costs are low shows the
potential for extending the storage durations from hours to days.
This scalability range can offer the potential to create electricity
grids that can be powered solely by wind. Moreover the response
time for a start-up is currently estimated to be below 5 min
following a half day long cool-down, which is very fast for a ther-
modynamic system, and is mainly due to the compact turbo-
machines and plate heat exchangers that are used in the design.
Therefore the role that ETES can assume in primary or secondary
frequency regulation applications is being investigated.
5. Conclusions and outlook
We presented a novel energy storage solution based on an idea
that has been in existence since quite some time. The argument is
not only that the particular choice of CO2 as the working fluid,
transcritical Rankine cycle, and hot water and ice as storage
materials for a ETES system but rather that ETES systems in general
hold a potential to become a future bulk electricity storage tech-
nology. We presented a design that was motivated by water heating
heat pumps [22] and which is kept as simple and as environmen-
tally benign as possible. Many independent studies [23e25] are
also looking at CO2 heat engines as a means of converting low
temperature waste heat into electricity. In addition there is a great
deal of interest in using CO2 heat engine cycles for nuclear power
applications [26e28]. Studies on CO2 compressors for carbon
capture and sequestration applications are numerous and they
consider final compression pressure targets very similar to our
conditions. The expected end result of all this interest is rapid
improvements in the efficiency, availability, and power rating of
CO2 turbines and compressors. The development of CO2 turbines is
a particular opportunity since currently available machines are of
radial type and can reach maximum power ratings of about 15 MW.
415
Axial designs3 with 100 MW power and more would enhance the
attractiveness of the proposed concept.
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3
Supercritical steam turbines with axial design are available for operating
pressures above 300 bars. This is about twice the required pressure rating for the
proposed transcritical CO2 ETES system. The lower operating temperatures should
allow for reducing the blade-casing clearances further increasing the maximum
efficiency of axial CO2 turbines. Studies [29] have shown that based on similarity
analysis and 2D designs CO2 turbines should have higher efficiencies compared to
air turbines under similar boundary conditions.