Design work under way
Rondo Energy and Rio Tinto have started front-end engineering and design on a Rondo Heat Battery with 360 MWh of storage and 30 MW of discharge capacity, Rondo Energy said. If the project goes ahead, it would be built at Rio Tinto's Yarwun alumina refinery near Gladstone in Queensland.
Funding in stages
The Australian Renewable Energy Agency is supporting the project with money released in stages. An initial $3.6 million is to complete the engineering and design study. If that study is completed successfully, ARENA would provide up to $38 million for deployment, and it has approved up to $33.3 million in conditional contingency support, which would be made available only in defined circumstances to manage specific project risks including cost overruns and electricity costs.
Charging on midday electricity
The batteries charge using low-cost electricity, store the energy as high-temperature heat in refractory brick and supply it as continuous process heat around the clock, typically in the form of steam delivered into a plant's existing steam network. The release states that Australia regularly has four to six hours of surplus solar-generated electricity in the middle of the day, while industrial facilities need heat at all hours.
What the study will test
The Yarwun study will assess the technical and economic viability of integrating the technology into refinery operations. Rondo said the project, if progressed, would be one of the first large-scale demonstrations of thermal energy storage for industrial process heat globally and a world-first for the alumina industry.
Dr Kira Rundel, Rondo's Head of Australia, said heat batteries let manufacturers use low-cost electricity for the round-the-clock heat their operations need, and that the project would show factories can cut emissions without raising energy costs. Armando Torres, Rio Tinto's Pacific Operations Managing Director, said reducing emissions from alumina refining is complex, particularly in generating the high-pressure steam the operations require, and that the study would help determine whether thermal energy storage can be a technically and economically viable alternative to fossil fuels for part of Yarwun's steam requirements.
