Thermal energy storage system opened at IIT-K

Kanpur: IIT-Kanpur director Prof Abhay Karandikar on Thursday inaugurated a thermal energy storage system of 775 turn/hour capacity in the Centre for Environmental Science and Engineering (CESE) building on the institute campus.
Prof Karandikar said that the institute is leading a joint Indo-US project, which is called UI-ASSIST, on smart grid and storage technology, funded by the Department of Science and Technology (DST), through Indo-US Science and Technology Forum, New Delhi.
He said that under this project, five demonstration pilot units are being set up in rural, semi-urban, and urban/institutional settings. As part of its urban pilot plan, a 775 turn/hour thermal energy storage system was inaugurated on Thursday, said the director.
He added that this system has been installed at the Centre for Environmental Science and Engineering building.
“This technology is quite effective in reducing the building air conditioning load and minimizing peak electricity demand in the system. This thermal storage system utilizes the latest concept of the use of phase change material with a Brine solution as coolant which takes low-cost energy during off-peak period to achieve the coolant temperature up to -4 degree Celsius and supports the air conditioning load during peak period to the tune of 77.5 TR for 10 hours. This also results in significant energy saving that can be adopted in Smart City and data centre applications,” Prof Karandikar added.
The project is led by Prof. SC Srivastava, Prof. Santanu Mishra and Prof. Ankush Sharma of the Electrical Engineering department of IIT-Kanpur and primarily executed by Vinay Kumar Tiwari, executive engineering in the institute’s works department and Shiv Kumar Singh, research establishment officer, electrical engineering department at IIT-Kanpur, with Kehems Technologies, Indore as the service provider.
Prof Sameer Khandekar from the mechanical engineering department has provided periodic guidance for the selection of the technology.