EIRES Lunch lecture

You are warmly invited to join our next online EIRES Lunch lecture scheduled as follows:

Date
Friday 12 May 2023

Time
12h00 - 13h00 CET

Topic
Recent advances in materials for sorption-based thermal batteries

Speakers

• Dr. Alenka Ristić - Laboratory for Adsorbents, Department of Inorganic Chemistry and Technology, National Institute of Chemistry, Ljubljana, Slovenia
• Nataša Zabukovec Logar - Department of Inorganic Chemistry and Technolog, National Institute of Chemistry, Ljubljana and University of Nova Gorica, Slovenia

Organized by
EIRES | Systems for Sustainable Heat principal scientists:

• Silvia Gaastra-Nedea - TU/e | EIRES
• Henk Huinink - TU/e | EIRES

Introduction
Thermal batteries hold a great promise to reduce the dependence of space heating and cooling on fossil fuels. The minimization of the mismatch between the thermal energy production (e.g. solar, waste heat) and its consumption relies on only a trivial amount of heat loss in sorption-based thermal batteries over longer periods of time. The process is based on the reversible sorption of vapours in porous solids, which is associated with the endothermic (desorption) and exothermic (adsorption) phenomena. The efficiency of this kind of thermal energy storage technology is determined by the performance of the sorbent used, which should, in addition to high thermal stability and good cycling performance, enables high sorption capacity of working fluid at low relative humidity and low regeneration temperature, if renewable solar energy is to be exploited.
The joint lecture will discuss our recent research on optimizing various porous materials, including zeolites, aluminophosphates, composites with inorganic salts, and metal-organic frameworks (MOFs), for heat storage and redistribution applications. In addition to the environmentally friendly synthesis methods, our work focused on the study of the structure-property relationship, which included diffraction, spectroscopic, calorimetric, and computational approaches. Water and short-chain alcohols were tested as working fluids in the selected systems. So far, the group of microporous aluminophosphates showed the best performance in terms of sorption capacity of water as working fluid, as well as sorption behavior and thermal stability. On the other hand, the use of zeolitic imidazolate frameworks (ZIFs), a subgroup of MOFs, in thermal batteries is still in its infancy, but is very promising as it allows rational design of structures with optimized sorption for selected application conditions.

About the speakers

Dr. Alenka Ristić | Laboratory for Adsorbents, Department of Inorganic Chemistry and Technology, National Institute of Chemistry, Ljubljana, Slovenia.

Alenka Ristić is a Senior Research Associate. She received her PhD in chemistry from the University of Ljubljana, Slovenia, in 2005. From 2015 to 2016, she was a visiting scientist at the Centre for Applied Energy Research in Germany. She has 28 years of experience in the development and characterization of nanoporous materials for heat storage and catalytic purposes in air cleaning. She is a member of the Slovenian Zeolite Association, a board member of the Slovenian Chemical Society, and an alt. delegate for Slovenia at IEA TCP Energy Storage

Prof. Nataša Zabukovec Logar | Head of Department of Inorganic Chemistry and Technology at the National Institute of Chemistry and Full Professor of Chemistry at the University of Nova Gorica, Slovenia.

She obtained her PhD from University of Ljubljana in 1998. She was a visiting researcher at the University of Manchester in 1995/1996 and at the Center for applied energy research in Munich in 2014. She has 30 years of experience in research in the field of porous materials for energy and environmental applications. Research emphases are synthesis and characterisation of materials for heat storage and CO₂ capture and conversion. Currently, she is a president of the Slovenian Zeolite Association and a secretary of The International Zeolite Association.

Detailed program
Download the invitation including full program (t.b.c)

Format
Online | MS Teams