Civil Engineering Reference
In-Depth Information
Thermal Energy Storage Technologies
R. Parameshwaran and S. Kalaiselvam
Abstract Energy, the lifeline of all activities is highly regarded to be conserved at
every step of the growing engineering and the stupendous technological activities
for ensuring the congruent economic development of a country. The gap present
between the energy generation and the energy consumption keeps expanding with
a precipitous increase in the demand for the energy, especially in the infrastructure
and construction sectors. From this perspective, the incessant value-added engi-
neering designs from the scheme inception to the construction are to be primarily
necessitated, for enhancing the energy savings potential and energy efficiency in
the new as well as in the refurbishment of building structures. Albeit there are
several measures available to minimize the net energy consumption in buildings,
there is still a need for an efficient system which can shift the thermal load demand
during the on-peak to off-peak conditions, without losing energy conservative
potential. In this context, the thermal energy storage (TES) systems are primarily
intended for enhancing the performance of the cooling and heating systems in
terms of storing and releasing heat energy on short-term or diurnal or seasonal
basis, depending on the thermal load requirements experienced in buildings. The
incorporation of renewable energy-based seasonal TES systems can collectively
contribute for achieving enhanced energy performance on a long term, which
would take forward the new and the existing building refurbishment designs
towards the nearly zero-energy concepts.
