Danielle Fong wants to reinvent the power grid using compressed air - Wired
interesting article about a process that supposedly doubles the efficiency of compressed air energy storage systems.
http://www.wired.com/wiredenterprise/2012/07/danielle-fong/
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....The question is always the same: How do we build a system that lets us storage energy and then retrieve almost all of it? But Steve Crane — LightSail’s CEO and a geophysics Ph.D. — says Danielle Fong has cracked at least part of the code. “It’s a little arrogant to put it this way,” he says, “but I think that Danielle has succeeded where Edison and others have failed.” The trick? Fong added water. LightSail’s prototype sprays a dense mist into the compressed air tanks, and this absorbs the heat produced during compression. Water can store heat far more efficiently than air, and with this mist, Fong says, the prototype more easily stores and releases power. It heats up the tanks to temperatures that are only about 10 to 20 degrees warmer than the environment, as opposed to several thousand degrees. The tanks are still pressurized to about 3,000 pounds per square inch — and Fong hopes to increase that amount — but since the power is stored at lower-temperatures, it’s easier to insulate the tanks. Some compressed air storage systems sit deep underground, taking advantage of the earth’s natural insulation, but LightSail’s tanks sit above ground, which is less costly. When you want the heat back, you just reverse the process, spraying the warm water out of the compression tank as the air expands, and it drives a piston to reproduce the power. But in both storing the heat and spitting it out, you need just the right amount of water. LightSail has tested nearly 40 nozzle heads — not to mention various tank designs — in an effort to achieve just the right mix. According to Fong, her system doubles the efficiency of compressed air, from about 35 percent to roughly 70 percent.
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"We know we can sell as many of these as we can make,” she says, insisting that by 2015, her company will be growing threefold every year. “This has never been achieved in any industrial setting. At all. But there’s no other possible energy storage solution that can do that. And if we don’t do it, pretty solid models about the climate — and the way the economy is going to go and what people will do with coal plants — will fuck the world.” Some may doubt whether all this will happen. And others may doubt whether Danielle Fong has the right plan to deal with it. But she’s used to that.
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