Improvement of Coal Power Plant Dry Cooling Technology Through Application of Cold Thermal Energy Storage

The proposed air pre-cooling system is focused on the air side of a mechanical draft dry cooling tower/air-cooled condenser (ACC). The system is based on 'cold energy' storage, which involves storing low-temperature heat ('cold' thermal energy) during the night when the temperature of the ambient air is low and using it to pre-cool the air entering a dry cooling tower/ACC during the hot period of the day. A pervious concrete (PC) material with embedded, encapsulated phase-change material (PCM) will be fabricated. It will be tested with air flow by an induced draft (ID) or forced draft (FD) fan and integrated into a direct contact heat exchanger. The combined system is referred to as the Cold Thermal Energy Storage System (CTESS). The CTESS heat storage modules will be designed by considering trade-offs between air pressure drop and heat storage capacity. PC mix designs without PCM will be developed to optimize porosity, thermal conductivity, and specific heat while meeting mechanical requirements of compressive and tensile strength and stiffness. The PC mixes will be fabricated and examined at the Advanced Technology for Large Structural Systems (ATLSS) Research Center at Lehigh University. After the baseline PC characterization, PCM will be characterized and three techniques will be examined for integrating this material into the PC matrix: micro-encapsulation, macro-encapsulation, and containment in embedded pipes.