SEHRENE’s new electrothermal energy storage (ETES) concept is designed to store renewable electricity (RE) and heat and to restitute it as needed. It is very energy-efficient (80-85%), is geographically independant and uses no critical raw materials. It enables 8-12 times longer storage duration than Li-ion, with LCOS of 80 – 137 €/MWh, depending on the use-case. This is lower than pumped hydro, the lowest-cost commercial electricity storage. Its lifetime of 20-30 years is 2 – 3x longer than Li-ion. A TRL4 prototype and the digital twins of 3 full use-cases will be delivered: (i) ceramics plant storing excess, on-site PV power in a micro-grid and industrial waste-heat for continuous green H2 production and self-consumption, (ii) a smart-grid, and (iii) a geothermal power plant. The ETES integrates: (i) a novel heat-pump design with a coefficient of performance of 50% the theoretical maximum, (ii) a novel thermal energy storage system with energy density of 90 kWh/m3 (+30%), containing phase-change material in a novel metallic Kelvin cells-like foam and (iii) ORC with novel operating parameters. New digital tools will optimise the energy management of the storage and facilitate investment decisions by potential end-users taking LCA and technico-economic factors into account. SEHRENE unites 5 R&D teams with top-level expertise in prototyping, physics-based modelling, characterisation and digital twins of thermo-electric systems, thermal storage and AI-based energy-management; 1 RE producer, 1 DSO, 1 ceramics company, 1 SME developing decision-support tools, and 1 SME for dissemination and communication. The exploitation plan aims to implement the solution in the first factory in 2029. SEHRENE’s market penetration will enable to capture 1% of the market by 2040 avoiding 90Mm3 of NG and 15Mt CO2/year. R&D and industrial partners project to generate 5.8M€ in revenues by 2035 from sales of heat pumps, thermal storage, ORC, licenses to R&D results and consulting services.

The main objective of the project is to develop solutions to recover the waste heat produced in energetic intensive processes of industrial sectors such as cement, glass, steelmaking and petrochemical and transform it into useful energy. These solutions will be designed after an evaluation of the energetic situation of these four industries and will deal with the development of Waste Heat Recovery Systems (WHRS) based on the Organic Rankine Cycle (ORC) technology. This technology is able to recover and transform the thermal energy of the flue gases of EII into electric power for internal or external use. Furthermore, a WHRS will be developed and tested to recover and transform the thermal energy of the flue gases of EII into mechanical energy for internal use (compressors). In order to reach this objective several challenging innovative aspects will have to be approached by the consortium. It is planned to design and develop a multisectorial direct heat exchanger to transfer heat directly from the flue gases to the organic fluid of the ORC system and to develop new heat conductor and anticorrosive materials to be used in parts of the heat exchanger in contact with the flue gases. These aspects will be completed by the design and modelling of a new integrated monitoring and control system for the addressed sectors. The consortium consists of 8 partners from 4 European countries. They cover several relevant sectors of the energy intensive industry, namely cement, steel, glass and petrochemical sectors. The industrial involvement in the project is significant and the project addresses the implementation of a full demonstration of the WHRS for electrical energy generation in one of the industrial partners (CEMENTI ROSSI) and a semi-validation of the WHRS for air compressors energy supply system at pilot scale.

RESTORE proposes a radically innovative solution for DHC, based on the combination of two key innovative technologies (TCES+ORC), that allows integrating a wide variety of renewable technologies combined with competitive seasonal storage in DHC networks, allowing them to be 100% renewable to radically improve their environmental sustainability. The first technology the project aims to develop is an innovative thermal energy storage system based on Thermo-chemical reactions, the Thermo-Chemical Energy Storage (TCES), that provides daily and seasonal competitive energy storage due to its high energy density, very low energy losses and its low-cost. The system represents a key development due to the fact that it allows harnessing the enormous amount of energy that is normally wasted due to the mismatch between energy demand (loads) and energy generation (related to the availability of the renewable resource or waste heat), mainly occurring between seasons. In addition, the project aims to develop a second technology that is based on Heat Pump and ORC and is combined with the TCES system. This second technology adapts the energy provided by different renewable technologies to feed the storage system, thus a wide variety of renewable technologies as well as waste heat can be integrated into the whole system to finally supply the energy demand under the specific conditions laid down by each DHC. This radically innovative solution would tackle the main barriers for a wide deployment of renewable energy technologies and waste heat in the existing and future DHC networks. The projects consider the experimental validation of the RESTORE concept and also the demonstration of the concept replicability potential, adapting and optimizing the proposed solution to different real sites (different network conditions and local particularities as the available renewable technologies/waste heat) spread over the EU, and quantifying its potential benefits via virtual use-cases.