A research team at Penn State University investigates improving solar and wind efficiencies via compressed air energy storage, and a look at e-fuels company Highly Innovative Fuels.
Aaaaand just like that, we’re on the last edition of Enspired for March. Am I the only one feeling like 2025 is absolutely racing by? I’d very much like to have it slow down a smidge, please! But, with several birthdays and an anniversary in the month of April for my family, I see no relief on the horizon, so I suppose we’ll fuel up and strap in!
Speaking of fueling up, this week we go over some alternative fuel options as well as a new way old wells are being repurposed. Let’s dig in!
Sarah Compton
Editor, Enspired
Airing Out Inefficiencies in Solar and Wind
Vector Mine/Shutterstock.com
Most of us are well aware of the major shortcoming of wind and solar: intermittency.
There are many ways to bolster these sources to make them more reliable, and one method that’s been gaining traction recently is compressed air energy storage (CAES).
What is it?
CAES uses excess energy to compress air.
As air is compressed, its temperature increases.
The reverse is also true: As the temperature of air increases, its molecules have more energy, so the pressure also increases. Flash back to PV=nRT in your high school chemistry class.
Many CAES systems try to find workarounds to manage or use the increased temperature of the air, including:
Adiabatic processes, whichretain heat and reuse it to release the compressed air, making a power plant 70–90 percent efficient.
Diabetic storage plants, which dissipate the heat into the atmosphere via heat coolers. Then, another heat source is used to release the air and move the turbines when needed.
Isothermal storage plants, which use heat exchangers to keep the internal air temperature equal to the outside air temperature. These plants do this by releasing the compressed air’s heat into the atmosphere and bringing in another heat source at the time of release.
Diabetic and isothermal CAES systems sound awfully inefficient to me, so I’m not too surprised neither has caught on. Adiabatic processes have gained some traction, but researchers at The Pennsylvania State University are going a different route.
New ideas: A research team led by petroleum and natural gas engineering professor Arash Dahi Taleghani is investigating geothermally assisted CAES systems through numerical simulations.
How it works: Their modeled system uses heat from subsurface rock formations to help better compress air and store energy.
The exact numbers used in the numerical simulations are behind a paywall, but this method could be worth testing in the real-world if the numbers play out (e.g. a realistic reservoir temperature).
Where are the geos? The role geoscientists have to play here is huge. We know where/how to find nearly everything this type of work needs: hot rocks, abandoned wells, and subsurface conditions.
To see a few releases about the paper, read here and here.
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In case you missed it, CERAWeek was last week, and as I was reading a recap of some of the session, a company called HIF (Highly Innovative Fuels) Global, caught my eye.
Driving the news: As the scope of our energy needs are becoming better understood, many are taking an “all hands on deck” approach to energy policy. E-fuels check many boxes because they are renewable, and when direct air capture is employed in the process, they are also clean.
How it works: Creating e-fuel (aka synthetic fuel) involves combining hydrogen extracted through electrolysis and carbon. HIF sources its carbon from various direct air capture methods. The video linked above explains the company's process.
HIF Global was recently awarded the first U.S. approval for an e-fuels pathway.
Why it matters: Meg Gentle, executive director of the board at HIF Global, predicts demand for e-fuels globally could reach more than 250 million tons per annum by 2035.
What’s next: HIF Global began in Chile, but they are slated to build a facility in Houston called Matagorda:
The plant will be the first large-scale e-fuels facility in the world, with a projected output of 1.4 million tons per year of e-methanol.
It represents an investment of $6 million and is expected to provide 150 full time positions and 4,000 during construction.
The plant is expected to capture 2 million tons per year of CO2.
York McCauley, Business Development Director at Expro, discusses the company’s portfolio and the technologies available to drive the CCUS sector forward. With a range of solutions from exploration to abandonment and beyond, Expro has the expertise and experience to derisk and optimize CCUS operations.
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