One practical use for getting the most from a radiant concrete floor as a thermal battery would be in areas with fluctuating energy costs - you can set your floor on a timer so it only comes on during low-rate hours 7pm to 7am in Ontario for example.
During the twelve hours that it is off, it acts as a battery by slowly releasing the stored heat, so you avoid having to pay the higher rates during peak-hours. As you move into the area of active heat-storage systems, one of the more common types of thermal battery not that there are a lot of them is a huge water tank buried in the ground that is heated by solar thermal panels. Even this type of system is not new, the first house in the United States with an active solar heating system was built In on the MIT campus Massachusetts Institute of Technology , and sat on top of a huge water reservoir that was heated by thermal solar panels.
Taking advantage of a 'phase change' raises the bar a bit - stick with me, it will be fun, I promise :. A significant input of energy is required to cause a material to change from a solid to liquid. That energy is later released when that material solidifies again. While those transformations are happening and the material is either absorbing or releasing energy, the temperature will stay constant.
Once the phase change is complete, the material will begin to change temperature again. So what does that mean in real terms? It means that in order to melt water, wax, metal, rock or whatever, you need to feed it a ton of energy. If you had a heat-collecting solar panel directly heating air or liquid rather than generating power with photovoltaics , you can use that to charge your thermal battery.
Envision this - a large tank of wax or water that is warmed by heated coils from a solar collector. Through that same tank runs another coil that is extracting the heat to pump it through your radiant floor or whatever other heating distribution system you have. This is because in order to melt, some chemical bonds in the solid lattice need to be broken, a process that requires extra energy.
One of the more common building materials with thermal mass benefits is concrete. While there are many materials that can be used in the application of heat storage, this is just a quick comparison of some of the more commonly available ones. So to conclude, paraffin can store 16 times as much heat per kg as concrete, and 3.
So while water may not be the best material to store heat, it certainly is the most affordably priced and easily accessible. Thermal battery diagrams are courtesy of Alternative Photonics. In the 80's I built a solar home in Nebraska which used "thermal batteries". It was super tight , had 16 patio door size windows and had only a wood stove for heat. We averaged one cord of wood a year - in winter cloudy Nebraska.
The heat from the glass wall rose to the roof and was sucked down a concrete block wall into a basement closet filled with hundreds of water jugs. The water slowly released the heat overnight. We insulated the glass wall at night with a rollup rigid R8 insulated shade called the Insulider. The plastic bottles you are burying make terrific "thermal batteries". I wanted to store so I did the candle wax the one that goes in jars.
I figure it btu of store heat. It will last about three day with no sun the ceiling heat coming in at degrees F. So the top part of the shed feel like a sauna and the bottom is about 75 to 80F and the dogs love it. That is brilliant! When I built a dog house I put a 'facing window that I figured with give him additional comfort on a cold day, but he unfortunately had no interest in ever going in it.
Free passive solar dog house for pickup never been used :. What you have actually done is give your dogs a phase change thermal battery for storing heat, in case you didn't see that article. I'm late to this discussion, hopefully not too late. Could a phase change thermal battery be coupled with PV and a heat pump for time shifting?
My notion is to heat the wax during the day when the sun is shining and ambient temps are high enough to allow efficient heat pump operation, and then release the heat after sunset. Sign Up to Comment. For a DIY solar air heater that sounds like it would work fine. It may help you even more than a single pane of glass as a thermal pane will keep even more heat inside the box, not to mention that using reclaimed building materials saves money and saves useable materials from ending up in a landfill.
See here for more on how to build solar air heaters -. DIY solar air heater instructional video. The only downside that we find with solar air heaters is storing the heat.
If you incorporate thermal mass into it you can get more production from your solar panel, as it will act as a thermal battery.
Since you are building this yourself I assume you have building skills and ingenuity, so I just wanted to pitch you the idea of somehow incorporating mass stone or brick perhaps to increase your comfort and efficiency. You may have seen them already, but below are a few pages about solar air heaters and storing heat that may be of value to you. We haven't seen any great results when trying to marry solar air heaters to an HRV.
It is a matter of laying a tube around the perimeter of the home below frost-depth, or below the slab or below the skirt insulation , so that incoming air takes advantage of ambient ground temperature. EaglePicher started development work on thermal battery technology way back in Department of Energy on a production basis, and in , our automated production facility in Pittsburg, KS was brought on-line to increase thermal battery production capability.
For over 70 years, EaglePicher has produced high-quality, reliable and cost-effective thermal battery systems, producing millions of batteries for a variety of defense markets , qualifying and manufacturing more than unique thermal battery designs. EaglePicher is currently the leading thermal battery manufacturer for the Department of Defense's missile applications. EaglePicher continues to dedicate resources toward advancing thermal battery technology.
These improvements span across materials, manufacturing processes and modeling. We are currently looking at alternative cathode formulations that lead to higher operating temperature, higher voltage, higher density, higher capacity and lower impedance.
EaglePicher is also working on high-voltage cathodes to create higher output in the same volume and overall weight reduction. Interested in learning more about our thermal battery technology? Tags alternate energy storage Alternative energy storage method AMTEC Battery as energy storage method electricity generation functions how to store energy using other energy storage other sources of energy storage round trip efficiency thermal battery thermo-couple battery to store energy using.
Ratna Ratna is a B. She is also an active Web Designer. She is an author, editor and core partner at Electricalfundablog. Hysteresis Loop.
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