Tri-generating compressed air energy storage

Compressed air energy storage (CAES) and its associated technologies were intro­duced and thoroughly discussed in Chapter 6. As mentioned there, one of the subca­tegories of CAES which is so promising for the future due to the capability of the multigeneration of heat, cold, and electricity is the concept of trigenerating-CAES (T-CAES), which may also be called subcooled CAES (S-CAES) or hydraulic CAES (HCAES) in specific designs. This chapter is dedicated to detailing the potential of this technology to be seriously considered for commercial use in the future, especially where integrated energy systems with established heat and cold grids are being developed. The chapter will begin with a general introduction about the technology, including its various possible configurations and its development history in the scientific literature, although the literature is relatively scarce as yet. Next, a detailed thermodynamic model of the system is presented to allow readers
to be able to accomplish comprehensive energetic and exergetic analyses of the sys­tem. This is followed by a section in which a technoeconomic analysis of the sys­tem, considering the impacts of partial-load operation, in a specific case study is presented. Finally, the chapter closes with a discussion of how the authors see the prospects of this technology in the research and commercial worlds.