Operation characteristics study of fiber reinforced composite air storage vessel for compressed air energy storage system

Compressed air energy storage (CAES) is a key technology for promoting penetration of renewable energy, which usually adopts the salt cavern formed by special geological conditions. To realize the wide application of CAES, it is crucial to develop the new air storage vessel that can be easily deployed. The artificial pressure vessel is favored because it can store high pressure air with good sealing character. Compared to steel vessel, the fiber reinforced composite vessel has advantages of light weight, corrosion resistance, and abundant raw materials. In this study, the glass fiber reinforced composite pipe is first investigated as air storage vessel applied to CAES through both experiment and simulation. The impact of different key factors on the operation characteristics of composite air storage vessel is considered, including the operating pressure range, air mass flowrate, ambient temperature and the geometric structure of vessel. The results reveal that the storage air pressure increases in charging and decreases in discharging, which changes approximately linearly. The range of temperature difference (ΔT) increases as operation pressure range increases. The maximum and minimum ΔT is 22.72 K and − 32.78 K when the low and high limit pressure is 0 MPa and 10 MPa, respectively. Meanwhile, the range of ΔT also increases with the increase of air mass flowrate and ambient temperature. The uniformity of temperature distribution is worse in charging, which is more easily affected by the change of the diameter of vessel. In addition, the heat transfer in the air storage vessel mainly depends on the Brownian motion of the storage air, and it increases linearly with the increase of storage air mass.