Liquid Air Energy Storage (LAES) as a large-scale storage technology for renewable energy integration - A review of investigation studies and near perspectives of LAES

Electrical Energy Storage (EES) technologies have received considerable attention over the last decade because of the need to reduce greenhouse gas emission through the integration of renewable energy sources. Renewable sources have an intermittent power output to the electrical grid, thus EES represents a strategic solution in balancing electrical grids and enables the decarbonisation of the energy sector. Cryogenic Energy Storage (CES) is a novel method of EES falling within the thermo-mechanical category. It is based on storing liquid cryogenic fluids after their liquefaction from an initially gaseous state. A particular form of CES, Liquid Air Energy Storage (LAES), has gained growing attention respect to other cryogens. The current state of LAES is still at the development and demonstration stage since no commercial or pre-commercial plants have been built. This technology has been developed in different ways throughout its history (from 1977), and, to the best of our knowledge, no review paper has been published so far about the CES topic. Therefore, the present paper intends to provide a clear picture of the CES/LAES virtues in the literature as well as the challenges associated to the system to be commercially viable. For this purpose, this review includes: an investigation of the properties of cryogens and different CES processes as well as the main ways the system could be combined to other facilities to further enhance the energy efficiency, in particular the combination to a refrigerated warehouse with cold energy recovery from the cryogen evaporation. (C) 2019 Elsevier Ltd and IIR. All rights reserved.