Small Scale Compressed Air Energy Storage

Abstract

Electrical Energy is what drives the modern word and storing it has always been a necessity since the source is not always available when the energy is needed. Nowadays with this boom of utilizing renewable energy sources the need is felt more than ever regarding significantly intermittent behavior of these energy sources such as wind and sunlight. Different tools have been employed for that purpose with different efficiencies and capacities. Compressed Air Energy Storage (CAES) is one of the promising technologies and being able to use it in small scales offers a lot of opportunities. In this thesis work, a Small Scale Compressed Air Energy Storage (SC-CAES) is designed, built and simulated. The steps taken to build and control this prototype as well as simulating it are reported thoroughly in this work and later on proper experiments are conducted to investigate compliance of the data acquired by the experiments with simulation results. The outcomes of the comparisons are discussed to state the possibility of using the simulation method for studying machines of the same category without building an actual prototype. In order to measure the important features of the system including the efficiency and capacity as well as its limitations, suitable experiments are also designed and carried out. During the experiments several iterations were made in order to reach the best control algorithm for highest efficiency and agility. Ultimately the prototype proved capable of delivering efficiencies as high as 39 % which is significant for a diabatic SC-CAES. The final results and the thoroughly explained procedure can be used as guidelines for design, simulation and building of similar systems of the same category.