Increasing energy demand and the need to reduce greenhouse gas emissions drive the development of efficient solutions for the utilization of renewable energy sources and waste heat in industry. In this thesis, a thermal energy storage system consisting of solar collectors, an underground TTES storage and an auxiliary heat source for covering the demand of an industrial consumer was analyzed.
A numerical simulation model was developed in the TRNSYS environment and a parametric analysis of the influence of collector area and storage volume on system performance was carried out. The potential use of industrial waste heat was also considered; however, it was found that due to its insufficient temperature level, it was not suitable for the analyzed case.
The results show that increasing the collector area from 300 m² to 600 m² reduces the share of auxiliary energy from 76% to 21%, while further increase beyond 1000 m² results in smaller additional effects due to reduced system efficiency. Increasing the storage volume to the range of 300–500 m³ significantly improves solar energy utilization, while larger volumes have a limited impact. The optimal system configuration is within 800–1200 m² of collector area and 300–500 m³ of storage volume, where the auxiliary energy share is reduced to 3–8%.
It was found that the system enables high energy efficiency and near-complete coverage of heat demand using renewable energy sources.
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