Design and Implementation of Compressed Air Energy Storage System CAES
Power Generation from renewable sources of energy is now becoming a trend all over the world. This also have provided us a sort of relief from generation through conventional sources of energy like thermal, coal, nuclear etc. But the intermittent behavior of the renewable source of ener
2025-06-28 16:26:24 - Adil Khan
Design and Implementation of Compressed Air Energy Storage System CAES
Project Area of Specialization Electrical/Electronic EngineeringProject SummaryPower Generation from renewable sources of energy is now becoming a trend all over the world. This also have provided us a sort of relief from generation through conventional sources of energy like thermal, coal, nuclear etc. But the intermittent behavior of the renewable source of energy is the main hurdle between adopting it as a permanent source of energy. This intermittency of renewable sources of energy makes them less reliable and ultimately, we have to depend on the conventional sources of energy in order to meet our demand.
The solution for the intermittency of the renewable sources of energy is to provide a reliable storage system which can store the renewable energy efficiently and have long life span.
Earlier on the storage systems which are used to store the renewable energy contains Lithium-ion Battery, dry battery and other types of batteries. But the problem with those types of storage systems is that they have very short life span i.e., not more than 4 or 5 years. Moreover, they are much expensive as compared to other storage systems. So, these are the problems which we have to face if we will try to make the renewable sources of energy as a permanent source of energy in order to feed the overall demand.
Keeping these problems in mind, we are going to design a storage system which can store energy for a longer period of time and hence may prove beneficial for solving this problem. Hence, in this way, we would be able to use renewable energy continuously without any interruption.
Basically, we are going to design and implement "Compressed Air Energy Storage (CAES) System" which is capable of storing energy in the form of "compressed air" and then the compressed air is released from high pressure to run the turbine in order to generate back the energy.
Another important point of our project is that we will also design "Tesla Turbine" in this project for the generation of energy from compressed air. The concept of Tesla Turbine is also not very common in Pakistan. The most important benefit of using Tesla Turbine is that it is capable of working at more than 95% efficiency particularly at very high RPM. This feature of Tesla Turbine makes it different from other turbines. The basic purpose of using this turbine is that the energy loss will be minimum and we would be able to retrieve back maximum part of the energy that is being stored in the form of compressed air.
Project ObjectivesAs discussed earlier that the main problem with adopting renewable energy as a permanent source of power generation is their intermittent behaviour. To overcome with the intermittency of renewable energy sources, we must have a reliable energy storage system so that bwe would be able to use the energy generated through the renewable sources without any interruption.
So, providing the solution for this problem, we are going to design a new type of storage system that is not so common especially in Pakistan. We are designing a "Compressed Air Energy Storage (CAES) System" in which the energy generated through the renewable sources will be used to first compress the air at particularly high pressure, hence we are storing that energy in the form of "compressed air" in a reservoir of air and then when the energy is needed back, we will release back that air from high pressure in order to run the turbine and hence will get back the power.
The main objectives of our project are:
- To provide a reliable and permanent source of storage systems in order to overcome the intermittent behavior of renewable energies.
- To design a storage system having longer life expectancy.
- To design a cost-efficient storage system for storing the renewable energy.
Here is a flowchart for the paractical implementation and working of our project:
Now I’ll explain the working of this project step by step:
- Firstly, we will generate energy from renewable sources of energy i.e., either solar or wind. In above flow chart, only solar energy is shown as a reference, but wind energy could also be considered here.
- That energy will be used to run the compressor in order to compress the air at high pressure in a reservoir or a cavern.
- Till this step, we have converted the renewable energy in the form of compressed air and have stored that energy in a cavern or cylinder.
- Now, when we’ll need back that energy, we’ll just release the stored air from high pressure to run the turbine and hence in this way the turbine will be rotated.
- The rotating shaft of turbine will then be coupled with the shaft of generator and the output of the generator will again be the Electrical energy, which is our demand.
- So, in this way, we can store Renewable energy for a longer period of time and can retrieve back the energy whenever we want to meet the demand.
The main benefits of this system are that :
- It will have longer life expectancy.
- It will be cost effective as compared to conventional batteries.
- No such maintenance will be required of this product. Only minor maintenances will be required and that will be quite easy
- It will be environmental friendly product, having no hazard on environment.
The technical details of our project are:
- We will store the air at very high pressure i.e., at approximately 200 bars pressure.
- For that highly pressurized air, we need a very strong walled cylinder. For this purpose, we are using a fire extinguisher which is capable of storing air at approx. 220 to 250 bars pressure.
- Then the compressor which we are using is the compressor of refrigerator, capable of producing almost 500-700 psi pressure.
- This highly pressurized air then will be released to run the "Tesla Turbine”having 6 blades with small spacers all combined together to make a uniform assembly.
- Then we will use a generator (right now its rating is not accurately calculated, but our target is to atleast generate 50-100 watts of energy.
| Item Name | Type | No. of Units | Per Unit Cost (in Rs) | Total (in Rs) |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Total in (Rs) | 40000 | |||
| Air Compressor | Equipment | 1 | 4000 | 4000 |
| Cylinder | Equipment | 1 | 12000 | 12000 |
| Tesla Turbine Blades | Equipment | 1 | 6000 | 6000 |
| Piping | Equipment | 1 | 2000 | 2000 |
| Casing | Miscellaneous | 1 | 6000 | 6000 |
| Generator | Equipment | 1 | 5000 | 5000 |
| Turbine Shaft, Ball bearings etc | Equipment | 1 | 3000 | 3000 |
| Miscellaneous Expenses | Miscellaneous | 1 | 2000 | 2000 |