MALTA – A New Approach to Energy Storage

God has gifted this environment with a lot of natural resources. Intelligent people in this world grab these gifts of nature, geared to the next generation smartly. Global fact says that Energy and environment cannot be separated from one another. It can neither be created nor destroyed as the law of conservation of energy. Here comes a project called Malta, which creates a very good cheaper thermal energy storage since it uses Salt. Salt processing has been a common practice of the people for about 8000 years. People living in one part of the country of Romania have extracted salt from boiling water. Salt-producing operations have taken place in China as well. The ancient Hebrews, the Greeks, the Romans, the Byzantines, the Egyptians, and the Indians had the custom of giving salt as rewards. Salt is extracted from salt mines or it is produced by evaporation of seawater. How could Salt be a new approach to grid-scale energy storage? Let’s discuss the points S-A-L-T behind Malta… 

Solutions of Malta is to store electricity in the form of heat and retrieve it when required based on exothermic/endothermic reactions. Renewable energies such as solar and wind are time-dependent, Malta was launched in order to offer a new approach to this. This thermal salt is the mixture of 40% potassium nitrate and 60% sodium nitrate. It also can be used in a liquid state between 260 -550 deg.C. It collects energy from the other renewable sources that power a heat pump, and creates a thermal difference that converts to thermal energy from electrical energy. This temperature difference is again transformed back to electricity with the aid of a heat engine. Malta collects the energy in the form of heat and stores it in large tanks of very high temperatures molten salt. It also collects cold and stores it in large tanks of low-temperature liquids.The system can be maintained for up to two weeks until the demand arises.

Additional values include low-cost raw materials, and prolonged storage capability of the salt.. The closed system can be charged / discharged again and again for the period of 40 years, which is three times more than the existing energy storage system. Cheap and reliable energy for the storage of renewable energy now and then as generated. Energy recovery can be achieved when peak demand occurs, especially during the night hours when solar energy is not available. The unique characteristics of Salt plays a vital role here in combining energy and the environment with an efficiency of around 99 %.

Figure: Process of Malta

Learning and development provide top-notch content to explore new things. The project Malta just started with the spark that salt can store heat and it was proved Robert A. Heinlein thought “Everything is theoretically impossible until it is done”. Malta can be of any size, both in terms of storage capacity and output power. It can be built near to the generation point or where the demand spikes. This cheapest energy storage facility is a gift to all kinds of people for domestic and commercial energy storage purposes. . A smoother operation and a predictable situation can make Malta the most important one.

Technology will pitch to the next level if the idea works well. Many startups started working on the prototype modeling of the system. This will become the world’s unique grid scale energy storage system after the simple pumped storage approach. The dream of  Robert Laughlin, Nobel prize winner, who coined the theory that Energy can be stored as heat in salt and as cold in antifreeze, has come true. Let’s cheer the world and set standards for the future with new ways of technology that give a handshake to the environment. 

“Salt is born of the purest parents: the sun and the sea” – Pythagoras