Grid Could Meet Sudden Energy Demands By Storing Power As Liquid Oxygen

Another 'airy-fairy' article from PopSci!

Separating air to have LOX and liquid N2 to store energy? Possibly this is the least efficient manner of storing energy they could come up with. Must be a project by an underclassman at Leeds.

This is intriguing, but for a science/engineering topic, why are data given about how many kwh it takes to liquefy these, versus how many kwh you can get back out?

It might be amusing to compare the enthalpy of cold liquid N₂ or O₂ with the enthalpy of the expanded vapor.

Interesting. They must have made big breakthroughs. Last time I did the numbers liquefaction was ~30% efficient and combustion to electricity out ~30% efficient.

So overall this would be 11% recovery of the oversupply due to thermal lag in coal fired power - converting carbon at ~25% efficiency.

Ummm 2.7%

(of each grid demand planning mistake) (if it is "fast start") (if it has no storage losses)

But you never know - perhaps it is The Big One and the "~11%" is actually ~80% so competitive with the recovery efficiency of re-pumping!

However it seems to me like more of: some will just try and try to keep this crap and wasteful approach to carbon conversion from dying out.

It takes at least 24 hours to cool down an air separation plant to the point that it can separate N2 and O2. I hope they have continuous excess demand.

Good point - but they could make it so - for "just a bit more" coal ....

_{Which is so far exactly what these idiot part process schemes all result in.}

The big boys in the business - Air Products, Air Liquede, British Gas, Prax Air and many others understand full well how their air separation plants work.

These guys are constantly studying how the can improve profit margins. I doubt they would miss something so close to their hearts!

As I remember, turn down on air separation plants is not efficient. They can't run them at 50% capacity during the day and then at 100% capacity when cheap power is available at night.