Implementation of large-scale heat storage of excess heat in Växjö´s combined heat and power plant. : A techno-economic analysis

To achieve greater economic stability, CHP plant operators such as VEAB from Växjö are motivated to search for a new business model that are compatible with their existing facilities while also contribute to increasing the overall revenue of the company. These processes include hydrogen production and biochemical products such as biopolymer and biofuels. However, these processes also produce a substantial amount of heat that needs to be taken care of. Alternatively, the extra heat storage capacity could allow the plant to be more selective of when to produce those heat to maximize profit. Therefore, it is important to investigate different approaches to achieve that, both traditional approach (e,g, convective cooling) and alternative approaches (different large scale underground heat storages). Lake source cooling is also investigated to determine whether it can replace convective cooling as a method of cooling off waste heat from the plant. The technical analysis showed that the alternative approach is certainly promising albeit with more land use (BTES requiring 36 000 m2 against 750 m2 of convectional cooling system) with some limitations that must be addressed when deciding the appropriate approach. In addition, it is found that by increasing the scale of the BTES system, the amount of heat loss per heat capacity reduces while increasing the borehole depth decreases the overall heat loss of the system. The economic analysis showed that when used solely to deal with the waste heat, the alternative approach is costs magnitude more than convective cooling, the alternative costing almost 6 times more than the convective cooling. There are certainly opportunities in the future that can make the BTES system to be a much more feasible choice if additional utilization of the BTES system could be found or potential demand may make the BTES system a more attractive choice to deal with the excess heat that comes with expanding the business of a CHP plant operator