EXERGY AS A TOOL FOR DESIGNING AND OPERATING THERMAL STORAGE UNITS

The paper presents the development, state-of-the-art, and applications of exergy analysis in the evaluation of the performance of thermal energy storage units. Formulas dealing with different sources of irreversibilities for complete charging-discharging cycles are introduced. The contributions of the most popular authors to the subject are focused on. Comparison of the present authors' results related to sensible heat storage units, utilizing a relatively simple iteration technique with that using the well-known optimization code „GRG2", shows an excellent agreement.