Opportunities of high-temperature thermal energy storage technologies

Since many years, thermal energy storage (TES) technologies such as regenerator storage for hot gases and Ruths storage for steam have been state-of-the-art in the high-temperature process industry to improve the energy efficiency. Over the previous years, some novel TES technologies became pre-commercial or commercial such as molten salt storage. At the same time there is a growing share of affordable but volatile electricity from PV and wind energy which leads to changes in the electricity market. Especially in the energy intensive industrial process heat sector, there are emerging topics like process hybridization with fossil and electrical supply, transition to flexible processes and storage options. Hence, integration of known and new high-temperature TES technologies in industrial processes is a field of growing importance.