SANDWORM
A New Era of Thermal Storage
Sandworm is a sand based thermal battery that stores low priced electricity from the grid as hot sand and discharges that energy as industrial heat.
What started as a US Department of Energy (DOE) project is now being commercialized.
The Innovation: Moving the Sand
Sand is one of the most cost effective thermal storage media. Its high thermal capacity and abundance makes it ideal for thermal storage.
What has hindered its adoption is the fact that it is an insulator. Traditional sand based TES systems have required prohibitively large heat exchangers, massive fluidized beds, or pulleys and augers with many moving parts.
The Sandworm solves these issues by moving the sand through a large drum. Inside, fixed blades move the sand into an external heat exchanger with just a 60 kW motor needed to rotate a tube the size of a two story building
This creates a sand based TES system that requires a much smaller heat exchanger and only one moving part.
Sandworm 5
Sandworm 50
- Truck transportable
- Max discharge temp: 600 C
- Max output energy: 1 MW
- Modular and stackable
- 95% round trip efficiency.
- Drop in replacement for existing infrastructure
- Built on site
- Max discharge temp: 600 C
- Max output energy: 10 MW
- Modular and stackable
- 95% round trip efficiency.
- Drop in replacement for existing infrastructure