Cheesecake Energy Ltd.

Andrew Pimm

Michael Simpson

Seamus Garvey

Bruno Cárdenas

James Garvey

Bharath Kantharaj

Paul Codd

A system comprising two or more thermal stores, a single store for pressurised air and a means of collecting relatively low-grade heat offers the potential for an energy storage system that achieves two desirable aims at the same time: (i) the total exergy that may be released when a given pressurised air store is discharged is maximised and (ii) the ratio between the exergy extracted and the work invested in compressing the air via a multi-stage compressor is also increased by exploiting some source of low-grade heat to augment the thermal content of several thermal stores. The system comprises a compressed air energy storage system which tends, in any one fill-empty cycle of the pressurised air store, to pump heat upwards in temperature from lower-grade stores to the highest-grade thermal store as well as a thermal capture subsystem that can augment the heat content of the lower-grade thermal stores. Some provision is also present whereby other fluid can be introduced into the expansion process in addition to the air that was compressed via the multi-stage compressor facility.

Growing community of inventors

Horsforth, United Kingdom

Andrew Pimm