This Giant Bubble in Sardinia Stores Energy for the Grid. Here's How.
spectrum.ieee.org
Google is betting big on CO2 batteries to power its data centers with clean energy.

"This giant bubble on the island of Sardinia holds 2,000 tonnes of carbon dioxide. But the gas wasn’t captured from factory emissions, nor was it pulled from the air. It came from a gas supplier… “The facility compresses and expands CO2 daily in its closed system, turning a turbine that generates 200 megawatt-hours of electricity, or 20 MW over 10 hours.”

    • sunbeam60@feddit.ukEnglish
      22·
      1 day ago

      That’s a hell of a lot better than most other systems. If true, and if scalable, this is a huge innovation.

      • fullsquare@awful.systemsEnglish
        12·
        1 day ago

        compressors, turbines (like steam turbines), piping, some of which heat-resistant (500C), container for liquid carbon dioxide, lots of plastic for the bubble, something for thermal storage, dry and clean carbon dioxide, these aren’t unusual or restricted resources, don’t depend on critical raw materials or anything like that

    • fullsquare@awful.systemsEnglish
      13·
      1 day ago

      Compressed air without heat recovery is more like 30%, so this is huge

      Carbon dioxide can be liquefied relatively easily which is what i guess makes this efficient

    • brucethemoose@lemmy.worldEnglish
      3·
      21 hours ago

      I was just about to bang out that they must lose a lot of heat from the compression. But apparently not! That’s amazing.

      I’m struggling to think of systems that would significantly outperform “75%+”. Chilled superconducting coils? Those are expensive, and would fail rather catastrophically.