Storage thermodynamics[edit]

In order to achieve a near thermodynamic reversible process so that most of the energy is saved in
the system and can be retrieved, and losses are kept negligible, a near reversible isothermal
process or an isentropic process is desired.[2]

Isothermal storage[edit]
In an isothermal compression process, the gas in the system is kept at a constant temperature
throughout. This necessarily requires removal of heat from the gas, which otherwise would
experience a temperature rise due to the energy that has been added to the gas by the compressor.
This heat removal can be achieved by heat exchangers (intercooling) between subsequent stages in
the compressor. To avoid wasted energy, the intercoolers must be optimised for high heat
transferand low pressure drop. Naturally this is only an approximation to an isothermal compression,
since the heating and compression occurs in discrete phases. Some smaller compressors can
approximate isothermal compression even without intercooling, due to the relatively high ratio of
surface area to volume of the compression chamber and the resulting improvement in heat
dissipation from the compressor body itself.
To obtain a perfect isothermal storage process, the process must be reversible. This requires that
the heat transfer between the surroundings and the gas occur over an infinitesimally small
temperature difference. In that case, there is no exergy loss in the heat transfer process, and so the
compression work can be completely recovered as expansion work: 100% storage efficiency.
However, in practice, there is always a temperature difference in any heat transfer process, and so
all practical energy storage obtains efficiencies lower than 100%.
To estimate the compression/expansion work in an isothermal process, it may be assumed that the
compressed air obeys the ideal gas law,
.
From a process from an initial state A to a final state B, with absolute
temperature

constant, one finds the work required for compression (negative) or done by

the expansion (positive), to be

,
where
vessel,
Example

, and so,

. Here,

is the absolute pressure,

is the amount of substance of gas (mol) and

is the volume of the

is the ideal gas constant.

How much energy can be stored in a 1 m3 storage vessel at a pressure of 70 bars

(7.0 MPa), if the ambient pressure is 1 bar (0.10 MPa). In this case, the process work is
= 7.0 MPa 1 m3 ln(0.1 MPa/7.0 MPa) = -29.7 MJ (equivalently 8.25 KWh).
The negative sign means that work is done on the gas by the surroundings. Process
irreversibilities (such as in heat transfer) will result in less energy being recovered from
the expansion process than is required for the compression process. If the environment
is at a constant temperature, for example, the thermal resistance in the intercoolers will
mean that the compression occurs at a temperature somewhat higher than the ambient
temperature, and the expansion will occur at a temperature somewhat lower than
ambient temperature. So a perfect isothermal storage system is impossible to achieve.