Aims and Scope
The School aims at providing young scientists and engineers both from Academia and Industry with the unique opportunity to learn from leading international experts advances in Latent Thermal Energy Storage (LTES) systems.
International Framework
EU has invested in a new low carbon energy system €2.3 billion in FP7 and €6 billion in H2020 and, much more is going to be invested in the upcoming Horizon Europe work program. Currently, the EU is on track to meet the 20% emissions reduction target for 2020 while there is still a lot to do to meet 2030 targets: at least 40% cuts in greenhouse gas emissions (from 1990 levels), at least 32% share for renewable energy, at least 32.5% improvement in energy efficiency. Besides, the European regulation on energy efficiency and the cited associated EU targets of energy savings and green-house gases (GHG) emission reduction are even more pushing the scientific and industrial communities towards the development of new technological paradigms.
Phase Change Materials (PCMs) and Latent Thermal Energy Storage systems are becoming key components in the energy structure of the future as envisioned by European Commission. Changing from a carbon-based energy society to one relying on renewable energy from the sun, wind, geothermal and biomass will necessitate matching the energy demand with the source availability.
This result can be only achieved through energy storage. Thermal energy storage is one of the most efficient ways to store energy and PCMs can make thermal energy storage compact and competitive.
The LTES can be applied to several sectors from power generation from renewable energy sources or waste heat recovery to the refrigeration and air conditioning, which can be considered as one of the most energy-consuming technologies, which impacts on our daily life. The possibility to store energy in latent cold or hot thermal energy storage is also becoming more and more investigated and applied by both the scientific and industrial communities. This is confirmed by the relevant increase of publications on the application of thermal energy storages constantly growing reaching more than 1600 in 2019.
