A UK-China collaborative project led by the Birmingham Centre for Energy Storage has led to the first commercial, large scale, composite Phase Change Material demonstration plant for curtailed wind power.
Professor Yulong Ding
Funded by UK EPSRC and the Natural Science Foundation of China, the project has successfully taken wind power, that would otherwise have been wasted and converted it in to heat that can be stored in materials and then used for space heating on a commercial scale.
This Grid Scale Storage for Intermittency project applies research developed by Professor Yulong Ding and his team and has led to the development of a number of composite phase change materials (cPCM) formulations across a range of temperatures. These cPCMs are substances that absorb and release thermal energy during the process of melting and freezing. The materials recharge as everyday temperatures fluctuate, making them ideal for a variety of everyday applications that require temperature control.
It is one of these cPCMs that has been commercialised by Jinhe Energy in China through a collaboration between the Birmingham Centre for Energy Storage and another nine industrial partners across the UK and China. As a result of this successful partnership, Jinhe Energy is exploring other ways to collaborate with the University of Birmingham, this would be through both research and development and creating a joint venture in the UK.
