Yes, I’ve wondered what the issue is with doing things like this, I mean surely there’s a way to do this with molten salt blocks too. What is the efficiency on this and how easy is it to maintain!?
"Liquid Air Energy Storage systems have the potential to be a competitive local and grid scale energy storage technology. They also have the potential to facilitate the penetration of renewable energy technologies. However, there is a clear disconnect between what has been proven in literature, and what has been demonstrated in practice."
I'm very concerned with the credibility of that source based on this alone. Unpublished and/or future-dated articles are to be taken with a pile of salt.
What you are seeing is the online preview, August 2021 is when it appears in print.
This kind of publishing is becoming more and more common, most likely to boost the journals impact factor (average number of citation within 2 years of publication). It's sketchy but doesn't say much about the article, only the journal.
Nothing sketchy about the journal either. The next issue may come out in August due to the publication schedule and article queue. But there's no reason to delay availability of the article after it's addressed all the reviewer and editorial concerns.
I'd think one major issue at this scale would be heat generated when pressurizing, and heat lost (= freezing) when depressurizing, the latter which could cause weakness and damage in any materials affected. But, I'm not a scientist or anything, take this armchair take with a grain of salt - there's other places where they do a lot with compression/decompression at scale, e.g. natural gas storage and transport.
Molten salt is going to be way more efficient on a round-trip basis. According to wikipedia, its something like 70% for molten salt, and 25% for cryogenic.
There are likely other engineering factors involved, but those efficiency figures are pretty damning on the surface.
Also from Wikipedia, the efficiency if 25% if you let the heat of liquefaction and the "cold" of vaporization go to waste, but it can be improved to 70% if you store that heat and re-inject it in the cycle.
