RF heating simulations for an energy storage system developed in the Horizon Europe Project Hystore

C. De Massari1, V. Garcia Diaz1, C. Santoloce1
1InovaLab, Padova, Italy
Published in 2024

Due to the increase on the academic and industrial interest on thermal energy storage (TES) systems, the EU Horizon project HYSTORE is developing 4 different solutions. In these solutions, the use of thermochemical materials (TCM) and phase-change materials (PCM) are proposed. We proposed an innovating heating methodology for this field: radiofrequency (RF) heating for TCM (specifically Zeolite 13X), instead of the conventional microwave heating. This technology is highly used in industry for its capabilities to provide high intensity and homogeneous electromagnetic fields. In this work, the numerical simulations for the electrodes design is described, in which the Zeolite 13X heating homogeneousness and hence the power density distribution is fundamental. The electromagnetic simulations were developed using RF Module in frequency domain in order to guarantee the power density distribution optimization of the process in correspondence with the impedance matching.