ILLUSTRATOR BRIEF FOR ‘Liquid Air Technologies – a guide to the potential’

Liquid air is a new form of energy storage and transport fuel that can be used for:

1. Balancing supply and demand on the electricity grid by storing excess wind power until it is needed

2. Low carbon transport fuel for (eg) lorries and buses 3. Low carbon refrigeration 4. Industrial waste heat recovery – turning waste heat from industrial processes into usable

energy

Air turns to liquid when refrigerated to -196C, and can be conveniently stored in insulated but unpressurised vessels. Exposure to heat (including ambient temperatures) causes liquid air to boil and rapidly expand 700 times in volume, and this expansion can be used to drive a turbine or piston engine to do useful work.

Liquid air can be used to store excess wind power or other grid electricity until it is needed, and to provide low carbon transport fuel for (eg) buses and lorries. Adding waste heat from some other source (power station, vehicle engine) increases the expansion of the liquid air and its energy output. At the same time, the expanding liquid air gives off large amounts of cold, which can be used to provide ‘free’ refrigeration or cooling.

This means liquid air plants are likely to be built next to conventional gas fired power stations, steel works or factories to make use of their waste heat. They may also be built at LNG (liquefied natural gas) terminals, which give off large amounts of waste cold, to help produce the liquid air. In vehicles, liquid air engines may be used by themselves, or in combination with a conventional diesel engine, to make use of its waste heat. They can also be used to provide extremely efficient and clean refrigeration for food lorries.

A high level explanation of liquid air can be found at the bottom of this briefing note. More detail can be found at www.liquidair.org.uk.

We need an illustration showing how liquid air technologies could be used in many locations/functions throughout the economy. The basic information we are trying to convey is enclosed in Powerpoint form in the attachment ‘LAIR integration graphic.jpg’. However, this a Powerpoint schematic; we need an illustration. Your job is to turn this information into a simple, informative and attractive picture.

Aspect ratio: A4 landscape.

File format: TBC

Style – something you would see in the Sunday Times when they’re trying to explain a complicated technology story such as a moon landing or an SAS attack etc. You could make it very slightly futuristic but not too much. This is not the Jetsons, but a technology that could be commercialised in the next decade. It is green technology, so it would be good to give that impression somehow.

Content: The basic information we are trying to convey is enclosed in Powerpoint form in the attachment ‘LAIR integration graphic.jpg’. The basic LAES process is shown in the centre (‘Liquefaction’, ‘Tank’, ‘Power Recovery’). On the left you can see how excess wind power and other forms of off-peak electricity are used to power the air liquefaction plant. Wind turbines are an important aspect – they produce power intermittently, and liquid air could help solve that problem. Top left you can see how the waste cold from LNG terminals can help to reduce the electricity needed for air liquefaction.

Once air is liquefied it can be stored in a tank (centre). From there it can used for any number of purposes. To the right (‘Power recovery’) you can see that the liquid air can be expanded through a turbine/generator to generate electricity. Just below, you can see how waste heat from a conventional power station, or a factory, can be used to increase the electricity generated from liquid air.

Alternatively some liquid air can be used to provide cooling for supermarkets, datacentres, cold storage etc (top right).

Or the liquid air could be used to fuel hybrid buses, lorries and delivery vans (bottom), massively reducing their fuel bills. That same liquid air could also provide ‘free’ air conditioning or refrigeration on those vehicles – which would be good to include in the illustration.

Or the liquid air could be taken by tanker to other locations, such as factories, steel works, chemical plants, where it could be used as a form of emergency back-up power, which could also use make use of local waste heat.

Approach: You could take one of two broad approaches:

1. Stick fairly closely to the thematic approach shown in the attachment ‘LAIR integration graphic.jpg’, where each function is described only once - but make it an illustration, not a schematic.

2. Take a more geographical approach, in which you illustrate liquid air technologies operating in various different locations, and the interconnections between those technologies/locations.

We are equally open to either approach, and will choose on the basis of whichever submission gives the clearest and best looking illustration of the liquid air economy.

Either way, you may need to create a stylised representation of each of the elements of the liquid air economy, including:

1. Liquid Air Energy Storage (LAES) plant, which is a big industrial plant that makes liquid air, stores it, and later uses it to generate electricity – all on a single site. It basically consists of: an air separation tower, a large cylindrical tank, and a electricity turbine/generator. You can see the components at http://www.liquidair.org.uk/full-report, chapter 3, Figure 3.10. The important elements are liquefying tower, tank, and turbine/generator. There are links to other visual references below.

2. Cryogenset is just the same as the LAES but without the air separation tower. Cryogenset does not produce liquid air itself, but is supplied with liquid air by road tanker, which it

stores in a tank, and then uses to generate electricity. You might make this smaller – Cryogensets are for smaller scale, distributed use (at factories, bus depots etc).

3. ASUs (Air Separation Units) are large industrial plants (like a LAES but with no generating equipment), which produce liquid nitrogen, which is distributed to industrial users and Cryogensets by road tanker. Liquid nitrogen can be used in place of liquid air in most circumstances.

4. LNG (liquefied natural gas) terminals are basically a collection of very large gasometer-style tanks. The ships look distinctive – with spherical storage tanks on the deck. A LAES plant or ASU might be built next to the LNG terminal to make use of its waste cold.

5. Liquid air or nitrogen can also be used in piston engines to power vehicles, either as the sole engine, or as a ‘heat hybrid’, in which a normal diesel engine and a liquid air engine are combined, so that the waste heat from the diesel helps increase the work output of the liquid air engine.

6. A small liquid air engine can also be used to replace the diesel-powered refrigeration units currently found on refrigerated lorries and vans. See visual references.

7. Liquid air would need to be transported from ASUs to bus depots, logistics centres (lorry parks) etc by road tanker – similar to a petrol tanker.

VISUAL REFERENCES

CLCF REPORT: http://www.liquidair.org.uk/full-report Fig 2.1 Air Separation Unit (ASU) schematic; Fig 2.3 LAES diagram; Fig 2.4 LAES plant photo; Fig 3.10 LAES plant schematic; Fig 4.10 Lorry with cryogenic tank

ASU images:

http://www.google.co.uk/imgres?imgurl=http://www.uigi.com/pltse3c.jpg&imgrefurl=http://www.uigi.com/new_cryo_plants.html&h=317&w=334&sz=13&tbnid=Qt6ukJS956CeUM:&tbnh=91&tbnw=96&zoom=1&usg=__zpUa-eyAeShDZNA3t_6taxZI_Xs=&docid=zCTsU-XEFmvS2M&sa=X&ei=Y3UkUqiKN-ek0QWs6IDoAQ&sqi=2&ved=0CFEQ9QEwBQ&dur=194

http://www.linde-engineering.com/en/process_plants/air_separation_plants/index.html

LNG TERMINAL

https://www.google.co.uk/search?q=isle+of+grain+lng&tbm=isch&tbo=u&source=univ&sa=X&ei=I3YkUtGGKI_20gWrs4HoBA&sqi=2&ved=0CEoQsAQ&biw=1280&bih=899

LNG SHIPS

https://www.google.co.uk/search?q=isle+of+grain+lng&tbm=isch&tbo=u&source=univ&sa=X&ei=I3YkUtGGKI_20gWrs4HoBA&sqi=2&ved=0CEoQsAQ&biw=1280&bih=899#q=LNG+SHIP&tbm=isch

Box 1: What is Liquid Air?

Air turns to liquid when refrigerated to -196C, and can be conveniently stored in insulated but unpressurised vessels. Exposure to heat (including ambient) causes rapid re-gasification and a 700-fold expansion in volume, which can be used to drive a turbine or piston engine to do useful work. The main potential applications are in electricity storage and transport, and in both liquid air can provide the additional benefit of waste heat recovery and/or cooling.

Since the boiling point of liquid air (-196C) is far below ambient temperatures, the environment can provide all the heat needed to make liquid air boil. However, the low boiling point also means the expansion process can be boosted by the addition of low grade waste heat (up to +150C), which other technologies would find difficult to exploit and which significantly improves the overall efficiency. Liquid air can also exploit the waste cold from LNG re-gasification to improve the efficiency of liquefaction and reduce costs.

Liquid air is not yet produced commercially, but liquid nitrogen, which can be used in the same way, is produced throughout the industrialised world. Indeed, for unavoidable technical reasons the industrial gases industry produces a large surplus of nitrogen gas that is currently vented to the atmosphere, which could be liquefied and used instead of liquid air. In Britain the nitrogen surplus would in principle be enough to power 310,000 households or fuel 34,000 buses daily. Liquid air would be cheaper to produce than liquid nitrogen since it requires less equipment and around a fifth less energy. (End of Box)