Browsing by Author "Famiglietti, Antonio"

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    An innovative strategy for improvement of energy efficiency in cement production by means of stratified thermal energy storage integration
    (Elsevier Ltd., 2025) Wolde, Ian; Famiglietti, Antonio; Abbas, Rubén; Cardemil Iglesias, José Miguel
    The cement industry represents a heavy emission source due to its large heat demands in its high-temperature processes, as well as a substantial source of CO2 emissions due to the ongoing chemical reactions. The primary air going into the combustion chambers could be pre-heated using available waste heat from the raw mill. However, batch operation imposes a challenge in supplying a continuous heat flow. Therefore, medium-tohigh-temperature thermal energy storage technologies could be assessed using pinch analysis to design and determine the operating parameters of a heat network with storage, aiming to facilitate the use of waste heat. Using a European cement plant as a reference, an assessment of a heat recovery system with storage is presented based on primary air preheating. The system is assessed considering thermal energy storage technologies that commonly present thermal stratification in order to reduce costs by working with a single storage tank. Air and thermal oil are evaluated as heat transfer fluids, and different filler materials for storage are considered for thermocline thermal energy storage systems. Results show that low-cost media such as copper slags could recover the system’s investment in less than a year, providing savings in the plant heat demand of up to 1.04%.
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    Techno-economic assessment of a concentrating solar air heater and packed-bed thermal energy storage for medium-temperature industrial process heat
    (2026) Famiglietti, Antonio; Calderon Vasquez, Ignacio Andres; Cardemil Iglesias, Jose Miguel; Wolde Ponce, Ian; Abbas, Ruben
    Among the solar thermal technologies, the Linear Fresnel collector can provide solar heat for industrial processes in the medium temperature range of 150–400 °C. Hot air is widely used as a process medium in several industrial processes, such as drying, curing, and cooking. Although steam, pressurized water, and thermal oil are widely used heat transfer fluids in the solar field, the use of air appears as an interesting alternative; it reduces installation costs as well as the risks associated with leakages, and it enables a direct coupling with the air-based thermal processes. This work proposes an innovative layout using Linear Fresnel collectors for direct solar air heating up to 350 °C in an open-to-atmosphere circuit, avoiding liquid heat transfer fluid in the solar field and heat exchangers. A packed-bed thermal energy storage using copper slags as the filler material is coupled with the concentrating solar air heater to increase the solar fraction to the medium- temperature industrial process. A comprehensive techno-economic analysis is carried out to assess the viability of the proposed concept, establishing the design methodology and operation strategy for improving economic performance. The solar system of 360 kW peak thermal power is integrated on an air-based industrial process having a natural gas burner as the conventional heat source, considering four different demand profiles. A methodology for optimizing the packed-bed size is implemented. A levelized heat cost between € is achieved by the combined system. Besides, the demand profiles 24/7 and 10/5 are found to have the highest potential to integrate the proposed system, enabling high solar fraction up to 0.6 with limited cost increase.