Energy Dome uses carbon dioxide as a grid

Carbon dioxide may finally get its chance to become a solution in the climate crisis. Italy's Energy Dome says its CO2 batteries will store energy at less than half the cost of lithium "big batteries," while also being very responsive to load demand.

This is one of a number of solutions being put forward to replace or complement lithium "big battery" installations designed to soak up excess energy when the grid's not using it, and then feed it back in when it's required.

We're going to need insane amounts of energy storage in the coming decades; within 30 years, we need to replace all the world's current 2.045 terawatts (that's 2,045,000 megawatts) of coal-fired electricity generation with clean alternatives, while significantly expanding that capacity to keep up with skyrocketing demand as nearly everything else that runs on fossil fuels – cars, trucks, boats, planes, industrial processes, you name it – gets electrified as well.

There's more than enough clean, renewable energy available; it just doesn't get generated right when it's needed the way coal-fired power can. So until the unlikely goal of a global energy grid is realized, the world's appetite for cheap ways to store and release green electricity is going to ramp up like mad.

While carbon dioxide is one of the world's biggest problems right now, Energy Dome proposes to use it as a solution, taking advantage of a dramatic expansion that it undergoes when shifting between its liquid and gaseous states.

Here's the idea: you start out with a giant, flexible bladder full of CO2 gas stored in a big dome. As energy is fed into the system, electric turbines compress the gas into tighter and tighter volumes, much like a compressed air storage system. Heat from this compression is drawn off into a thermal energy storage system, and the gas is condensed into a liquid, which can be stored under pressure at ambient temperatures. That's the charge cycle.

When it's time to discharge, the liquid CO2 is evaporated with the assistance of the stored heat, and its expansion drives a second set of turbines, generating electricity and feeding it back to the grid from whence it came as the gas goes back into the bladder dome. (Incidentally, if you're looking for a band name, Bladderdome appears to be free and the URL is available for purchase.)

These domes can be run in a number of different sizes and configurations, but a target full-scale plant would make around 25 MW and store between 100-200 MWh of energy.

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