LOW-TEMPERATURE LATENT THERMAL ENERGY STORAGE SYSTEMS AS A MEANS OF INTERFACING LNG REGASIFICATION AND URBAN COOLING DEMAND

Abstract

As a fuel-scarce nation, much of Singapore’s natural gas reserves in the country are stored as Liquefied Natural Gas (LNG) which arrives in LNG carriers by sea and is stored under cryogenic conditions in coastal terminals. This gives rise to opportunities at developing technologies for harvesting the latent ‘cold’ energy of the LNG during its regasification process. Current academic study is largely focused on low-temperature power cycles or air liquefaction to recover this cold energy. However, numerous obstacles persist – power cycles often produce poor recovery efficiency, while liquid air energy storage (LAES) systems are highly complex and unestablished in implementation. Cryogenic latent thermal energy storage (LTES) systems have strong potential in this area to bridge the gap between LNG cold energy supply and urban district cooling systems (DCS). In Singapore, space cooling is responsible for more than half of urban energy demand.