Induction heating of firebricks for the large-scale storage of nuclear and renewable energy

Abstract

The lack of low-cost, large-scale energy storage is one of the biggest obstacles to the ongoing transition from an energy market dominated by fossil fuels to one dominated by nuclear and renewable energy. Storing energy as heat in firebricks has a number of potential advantages over existing energy storage methods such as batteries and pumped-storage. This work investigated the application of induction heating to firebrick energy storage. The distributions of magnetic field and temperature in firebricks under induction heating were simulated and compared with experiments. It was found that firebricks can be induction heated to high temperatures (>700°C); different material compositions give different temperature responses; and rate of temperature increase is positively correlated with electrical conductivity. It was also shown that, in addition to use in large-scale energy storage, induction heating can be used to measure electrical conductivity and for firebrick quality assurance.