Preliminary screening of SrO-based composites for thermochemical energy storage

In the framework of the thermochemical energy storage (TCES) for concentrating solar power (CSP) applications, the reversible calcination/carbonation of metal carbonates is receiving increasing interest. In this context, the SrCO/SrO system is one of the most promising solution due to its high energy density (4 GJ m) and working temperatures (up to 1200 °C). In analogy to the well-known CaCO/CaO system, also SrO suffers from a dramatic drop of reactivity when subjected to cycling operations due to sintering. Therefore, it is necessary to focus the research activity to the material characterization and improvement of its multicycle conversion and stability. In this work, different materials (containing Al, Ca, P or Zr) have been incorporated in the SrO/SrCO system as agglomeration/sintering inhibitors. The multi-cyclic stability and performances of all the synthesized SrO-based composites have been studied in thermobalance and the materials, have been characterized from the morphological and chemico-physical point of view (SEM-EDS, XRD).