The world's first commercial 'sand battery' stores heat at 500C for months at a time. So how does it work, and should we build them in Australia?
The idea of storing heat in sand to warm homes through winter may, on the face of it, seem too simple to work.The world's first commercial "sand battery" stores heat at 500 degrees Celsius for months at a timeThermal storage could displace gas in industry and remove up to 16 per cent of Australia's emissions, experts say
Finland begs to differ. This month saw the Nordic nation launch the world's first commercial "sand battery". It can store up to 8 megawatt-hours of energy, which is the capacity of a large, grid-scale lithium battery. Very little energy is lost in this process, so long as the heat is not being transported very far, he said.
"[Stored thermal] can be used for everything from food processing, to parts of the aluminium industry, to parts of cement manufacture, iron and steel, ceramics and plastics."
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