Hydrogen Energy Storage: New Techno-Economic Emergence Solution Analysis

International audienceThe integration of various renewable energy sources as well as the liberalization of electricity markets are established facts in modern electrical power systems. The increased share of renewable sources within power systems intensifies the supply variability and intermittency. Therefore, energy storage is deemed as one of the solutions for stabilizing the supply of electricity to maintain generation-demand balance and to guarantee uninterrupted supply of energy to users. In the context of sustainable development and energy resources depletion, the question of the growth of renewable energy electricity production is highly linked to the ability to propose new and adapted energy storage solutions. The purpose of this multidisciplinary paper is to highlight the new hydrogen production and storage technology, its efficiency and the impact of the policy context on its development. A comprehensive techno/socio/economic study of long term hydrogen based storage systems in electrical networks is addressed. The European policy concerning the different energy storage systems and hydrogen production is explicitly discussed. The state of the art of the techno-economic features of the hydrogen production and storage is introduced. Using Matlab-Simulink for a power system of rated 70 kW generator, the excess produced hydrogen during high generation periods or low demand can be sold either directly to the grid owners or as filled hydrogen bottles. The affordable use of Hydrogen-based technologies for long term electricity storage is verified

Annihilation of low energy antiprotons in silicon

The goal of the AE$\mathrm{\bar{g}}$IS experiment at the Antiproton Decelerator (AD) at CERN, is to measure directly the Earth's gravitational acceleration on antimatter. To achieve this goal, the AE$\mathrm{\bar{g}}$IS collaboration will produce a pulsed, cold (100 mK) antihydrogen beam with a velocity of a few 100 m/s and measure the magnitude of the vertical deflection of the beam from a straight path. The final position of the falling antihydrogen will be detected by a position sensitive detector. This detector will consist of an active silicon part, where the annihilations take place, followed by an emulsion part. Together, they allow to achieve 1$$ precision on the measurement of $\bar{g}$ with about 600 reconstructed and time tagged annihilations. We present here, to the best of our knowledge, the first direct measurement of antiproton annihilation in a segmented silicon sensor, the first step towards designing a position sensitive silicon detector for the AE$\mathrm{\bar{g}}$IS experiment. We also present a first comparison with Monte Carlo simulations (GEANT4) for antiproton energies below 5 MeVComment: 21 pages in total, 29 figures, 3 table

AEGIS at CERN: Measuring Antihydrogen Fall

The main goal of the AEGIS experiment at the CERN Antiproton Decelerator is the test of fundamental laws such as the Weak Equivalence Principle (WEP) and CPT symmetry. In the first phase of AEGIS, a beam of antihydrogen will be formed whose fall in the gravitational field is measured in a Moire' deflectometer; this will constitute the first test of the WEP with antimatter.Comment: Presented at the Fifth Meeting on CPT and Lorentz Symmetry, Bloomington, Indiana, June 28-July 2, 201

Prospects for measuring the gravitational free-fall of antihydrogen with emulsion detectors

The main goal of the AEgIS experiment at CERN is to test the weak equivalence principle for antimatter. AEgIS will measure the free-fall of an antihydrogen beam traversing a moir\'e deflectometer. The goal is to determine the gravitational acceleration g for antihydrogen with an initial relative accuracy of 1% by using an emulsion detector combined with a silicon micro-strip detector to measure the time of flight. Nuclear emulsions can measure the annihilation vertex of antihydrogen atoms with a precision of about 1 - 2 microns r.m.s. We present here results for emulsion detectors operated in vacuum using low energy antiprotons from the CERN antiproton decelerator. We compare with Monte Carlo simulations, and discuss the impact on the AEgIS project.Comment: 20 pages, 16 figures, 3 table

A Moiré Deflectometer for Antimatter

The precise measurement of forces is one way to obtain deep insight into the fundamental interactions present in nature. In the context of neutral antimatter, the gravitational interaction is of high interest, potentially revealing new forces that violate the weak equivalence principle. Here we report on a successful extension of a tool from atom optics - the moirè deflectometer - for a measurement of the acceleration of slow antiprotons. The setup consists of two identical transmission gratings and a spatially resolving emulsion detector for antiproton annihilations. Absolute referencing of the observed antimatter pattern with a photon pattern experiencing no deflection allows the direct inference of forces present. The concept is also straightforwardly applicable to antihydrogen measurements as pursued by the AEgIS collaboration. The combination of these very different techniques from high energy and atomic physics opens a very promising route to the direct detection of the gravitational acceleration of neutral antimatter

Development of nuclear emulsions operating in vacuum for the AEgIS experiment

For the first time the AEgIS (Antihydrogen Experiment: Gravity, Interferometry, Spectroscopy) experiment will measure the Earth\u2019s local gravitational acceleration g on antimatter through the evaluation of the vertical displacement of an antihydrogen horizontal beam. This will be a model independent test of the Weak Equivalence Principle at the base of the general relativity. The initial goal of a g measurement with a relative uncertainty of 1% will be achieved with less than 1000 detected antihydrogens, provided that their vertical position could be determined with a precision of a few micrometers. An emulsion based detector is very suitable for this purpose featuring an intrinsic sub-micrometric spatial resolution. Nevertheless, the AEgIS experiment re- quires unprecedented operational conditions for this type of detector, namely vacuum environment and very low temperature. An intense R&D activity is presently going on to optimize the detector for the AEgIS experimental requirements with rather encouraging results

AEgIS Experiment: Measuring the Acceleration g of the Earth's Gravitational Field on Antihydrogen Beam

The AEgIS experiment [1] aims at directly measuring the gravitational acceleration g on a beam of cold antihydrogen (H) to a precision of 1%, performing the first test with antimatter of the (WEP) Weak Equivalence Principle. The experimental apparatus is sited at the Antiproton Decelerator (AD) at CERN, Geneva, Switzerland. After production by mixing of antiprotons with Rydberg state positronium atoms (Ps), the atoms will be driven to fly horizontally with a velocity of a few 100 ms−1 for a path length of about 1 meter. The small deflection, few tens of μm, will be measured using two material gratings (of period ∼ 80 μm) coupled to a position-sensitive detector working as a moiré deflectometer similarly to what has been done with matter atoms [2]. The shadow pattern produced by the beam will then be detected by reconstructing the annihilation points with a spatial resolution (∼ 2 μm) of each antiatom at the end of the flight path by the sensitive-position detector. During 2012 the experimental apparatus has been commissioned with antiprotons and positrons. Since the AD will not be running during 2013,during the refurbishment of the CERN accelerators, the experiment is currently working with positrons, electrons and protons, in order to prepare the way for the antihydrogen production in late 2014