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Manuscript_85478a7647ef0247ac0aba1c1ae17d09

Effects of Porous Media Insert on the Efficiency and Power Density of a

High Pressure (210 bar) Liquid Piston Air Compressor/Expander
- An Experimental Study I
Revision #1

Jacob Wieberdinka,b , Perry Y. Lia,∗, Terrence W. Simona , James D. Van de Vena

a Department of Mechanical Engineering, University of Minnesota, Minneapolis, MN 55455, USA
b Presently at Cummins Inc. Columbus, IN 47201, USA.

Abstract
A high pressure, efficient and power dense air compressor/expander is a critical element in an isothermal
compressed air energy storage (ICAES) system. Heat transfer is often the limiting factor in realizing efficient
and power dense compression and expansion processes. Liquid piston compressor/expanders with porous
media inserts have been proposed, in which the porous media serves as heat exchangers. While this concept
has been studied through modeling and simulation, it has only been validated experimentally at low pressures
(10bar). This paper studies experimentally the effect of porous media in a high pressure (7 to 210bar)
liquid piston air compressor/expander, which is the proposed pressure for the ICAES system. Cases with
the porous media uniformly distributed and non-uniformly distributed in the chamber are studied with
various compression and expansion rates. Results show that at 93% efficiency, the uniformly distributed
2.5mm interrupted plate porous medium increases power density by 10 times in compression and 20 times
in expansion; or at the same power, efficiency is increased by 13% in compression and 23% in expansion.
Moreover, the porous medium, if deployed at the top of the chamber, is shown to be more effective than if
deployed at the bottom. The results indicate that the added surface area provides the dominant benefits
but the porous media also increase the heat transfer coefficient at the same efficiency regime. These results
are consistent with and extend the findings from previous low pressure experiments.
Keywords: Liquid piston, Porous Media, Gas Compression, Gas Expansion, Isothermal, Compressed Air
Energy Storage (CAES)

Hightlights 4. Porous media surface area is mostly responsi-

ble for performance improvement
1. 1st high pressure test of liquid piston air com-
5. Power weighted specific surface area of porous
pressor/expander w/ porous media
media determines performance
2. 10x increase in power density with no change
in efficiency with tested porous medium
3. Spatial distribution effect: Porous medium at 1. Introduction
top of chamber better than at bottom
As intermittent and often unpredictable sources
of renewable energy such as wind and solar increase
I Research supported by the National Science Foundation
their penetration into the electrical grid, there is
under grant EFRI 1038294 and the University of Minnesota
Institute of Renewable Energy and Environment (IREE) un- an increasing need for grid scale energy storage to
der grant RE-0027-11 ensure that power supply and demand are balanced
∗ Corresponding author
for a reliable electrical grid. Compressed air energy
Email addresses: jacobwieberdink@gmail.com (Jacob
Wieberdink), lixxx0999@umn.edu (Perry Y. Li),
storage (CAES) is generally acknowledged to be an
simon002@umn.edu (Terrence W. Simon), vandeven@umn.edu economically competitive means for providing large
(James D. Van de Ven) scale energy storage.
Preprint submitted to Applied Energy December 1, 2017

© 2017 published by Elsevier. This manuscript is made available under the Elsevier user license
https://www.elsevier.com/open-access/userlicense/1.0/
 Conventional CAES systems in operation, such
as the plants in McIntosh, USA or Huntdorf, Ger-
many, use excess electricity to compress air (up to
80 bar [8MPa]) into a cavern, and the energy is
recuperated by burning a mixture of natural gas
with the compressed air. The requirement for ad-
ditional hydrocarbon fuel and the low efficiency of
the storage-regeneration cycle itself (estimated at
29-36% [1]) diminish the attractiveness of the con-
ventional CAES processes. Moreover, to maintain
acceptable power, the compressed air pressure in
the cavern can only cycle within a limited range
(50-80bar), leading to low energy density. In re-
cent years, alternate fossil fuel-free CAES archi-
tectures have been proposed. One approach is
the Advanced Adiabatic Compressed Air Energy
Storage (A-ACAES) system in which air is com-
pressed nearly adiabatically to high pressure and
high temperature [2, 3]. The hot compressed air
is then stripped of the heat and stored in a pres-
sure vessel, whereas the heat is stored separately
in thermal storage. During regeneration, the com-
pressed air is reheated with the stored heat and is
allowed to expand, and the expansion work is used
to generate electricity directly. Another approach
is Isothermal CAES (ICAES), which is our focus.
Here, air is compressed near isothermally to high
pressure, and stored directly in the storage vessel
at near-ambient temperature. In the reverse pro-
cess, the compressed air at ambient temperature ex-
pands nearly isothermally to regenerate the energy.
ICAES eliminates the need for an extra thermal
storage and by avoiding high temperature, higher
compressed air pressure can be reached, thus in-
creasing energy storage density. References [4] and
[5] describe an ICAES for a wind turbine or wind
farm using the open-accumulator architecture that
our group has been researching.
A critical component in an ICAES system is
an air compressor/expander (C/E) capable of high
pressure, high efficiency and high power. Conven-
tionally, a high pressure gas compressor consists
of multiple stages with inter-cooling. This cre-
ates a zig-zag pressure-volume curve consisting of
successive adiabatic and constant volume cooling
segments. A compressor with multiple adiabatic
stages and ideal inter-cooling to ambient tempera-
ture is the most efficient if all stages have the same
compression ratio [6]. As the number of stages in-
creases, compression approaches the most efficient
isothermal compression. Whereas efficiency of the
compressor/expander is governed by the pressure-
2
volume (P-V) curve, the time it takes to trace the
curve and hence the power (work/time) depends
on the heat transfer rate in the air chamber of the
C/E or in the inter-cooling. If less time is allowed
for heat transfer, the P-V curve deviates more and
more from isothermal and becomes less and less ef-
ficient. Hence, there is an inherent trade-off be-
tween efficiency and power of C/E. This trade-off
can be mitigated by optimizing the compression
and expansion trajectories [7, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12] so
that power density can be improved several fold
without sacrificing efficiency. It can also be mit-
igated by enhancing the heat transfer capability.
One approach is to introduce tiny liquid droplets
with high heat capacity and large total heat trans-
fer surface area [13, 14, 15, 16]. Another approach,
pursued in this paper, is to use a liquid piston in a
compression/expansion chamber filled with porous
material, as first proposed in [17]. The liquid pis-
ton freely flows through the porous material, hav-
ing greatly increased heat transfer area. Compared
with a rigid piston, a liquid piston also forms an
effective low-friction seal for the air in the C/E. Re-
cently, an inverted liquid-piston concept, in which
the liquid is stationary but the chamber moves, has
also been proposed [18].
Numerical simulations of fluid flow and heat
transfer were conducted for various geometries (tiny
tubes, metal foams and interrupted-plate heat ex-
changers) in [17, 19, 20, 21, 22]. Preliminary ex-
perimental studies of enhanced heat transfer with
the use of inserts are reported in [23]. However,
since the instrumentation was limited, only lim-
ited qualitative inferences could be made. Liquid
piston compressors with tube inserts, as initially
proposed in [17], were demonstrated in low pres-
sure benchtop ocean compressed air energy storage
(OCAES) setups in [24, 25] with pressure ratios
of 2 and 6. Our previous experimental study on
heat transfer enhancement with porous media in-
serts was reported in [26, 27] in which various types
(ABS interrupted plates and metal foams) and var-
ious geometries were studied. The conclusions are
that introduction of a porous medium in a liquid
piston C/E can indeed increase power density by
an order of magnitude (at the same efficiency) and
efficiency by ∼ 20% (at the same power density),
and the increase in heat transfer surface area is the
predominant reason. Moreover, the increased heat
capacitance and conductivity offered by metal in-
serts compared to ABS plastic has only small effect
in these tests.
 C volume flow rate, the compressed air volume and
Compressed
air
Liquid
To A B To
Wind/ electric
Wave G/M
Atm
Figure 1: Open Accumulator Isothermal Compressed
Air Energy Storage System (OA-ICAES). A = hydraulic
pump/motor; B = Isothermal air compressor/expander; C
= Storage vessel with both liquid/compressed air .
The work in [26, 27] was limited, however, in that
the maximum pressure is only 10 bar. Moreover,
only uniformly distributed porous media were stud-
ied, and in the expansion experiments, only orifice
governed expansion rates (instead of constant rates)
were tested. However, our proposed ICAES in [4, 5]
is to operate with a two or three stage C/E up to
210bar pressure, and the liquid piston C/E is tar-
geted for the higher pressure stages (7-210bar) of
the C/E instead of the low pressure stage. There-
fore, it is important to experimentally validate the
use of porous media inserts in the high pressure
(210bar) operating regime where the power level
and the amount of heat transfer required are much
higher than for the 10bar case, the air property de-
viates more from ideal gas property, and the air
velocity is expected to be lower.
In the present paper, effects of interrupted paral-
lel plates porous media (a design that was found to
be effective both numerically [20, 21, 22] and in low
pressure experiments [27]) are tested in the pressure
range of 7-210 bar for both compression and expan-
sion. The hypotheses to be tested experimentally
are: 1) increasing the mass and total heat trans-
fer area of these porous media improves both the
power density and efficiency of the compression and
expansion processes; and 2) as suggested in numeri-
cal and analytical studies in [10, 28], an appropriate
non-uniform spatial distribution of porous media
geometry within the C/E improves the efficiency-
power density trade off.
The tests are accomplished using a liquid pis-
ton C/E experimental setup in which the liquid
3
pressure are carefully controlled or monitored. Sin-
gle shot experiments with different constant volume
change rates are conducted with different geome-
tries and spatial distribution of the porous media
inserts. The thermodynamic process data thus ob-
tained should be representative of a reciprocating
C/E in the actual application. The tests in this pa-
per represent the highest pressure demonstration of
the liquid piston C/E concept in the open literature
to date. The quantitative results obtained can also
be used for system sizing and design.
The rest of the paper is organized as follows. Sec-
tion 2 presents the ICAES operation and thermo-
dynamic cycle. Section 3 presents the experimen-
tal setup and method. Section 4 presents the ex-
perimental results. Section 5 presents the results
in terms of the trade-off between efficiency-power
density. Sections 6 and 7 contain discussions and
concluding remarks.
2. Thermodynamic Cycle of Isothermal
CAES and the Liquid Piston Compres-
sor/Expander
In this section, we review the isothermal CAES
application and the proposed liquid piston air com-
pressor/expander (C/E) concept.
2.1. Isothermal CAES thermodynamic cycle
Figure 1 shows the schematic of an Isothermal
CAES in the open accumulator configuration [29].
It allows mechanical energy input (such as from
a wind turbine or a wave energy converter or ex-
cess electricity via an electric generator/motor) to
be stored as compressed air, over hours or days,
in the storage vessel (C) containing liquid (prefer-
ably water) and compressed air at the same pres-
sure. Energy can be stored in / extracted from
(C) either hydraulically (as in a conventional hy-
draulic accumulator) via the variable displacement
hydraulic pump/motor (A) or pneumatically (as in
a conventional air reservoir) via the near-isothermal
air C/E (B). By coordinating the hydraulic and the
pneumatic power paths, the pressure in the stor-
age vessel (C) can be controlled independently of
the energy content. For example, as compressed
air is being released from (C) via (B), some liq-
uid can be added via (A) to reduce the compressed
air volume to maintain the pressure. This makes
all compressed air in the storage vessel usable at
high pressure. In a constant volume compressed
air only storage vessel, some residual air would
not be usable because the pressure would be too
low near the end of extraction. Together with in-
creased storage pressure at 210bar, the open accu-
mulator architecture increases the energy density
over a conventional CAES (where pressure cycles
between 50-80 bar) by 5.5-folds to 25.4kW hm−3 .
The dual power-paths offer opportunities for down-
sizing the air C/E while satisfying the power de-
mand, optimizing the overall efficiency and rapid
response (since the hydraulic pump/motor can re-
spond within 0.1sec) (see [29, 4, 5] for details).
The air C/E (B) is the key component of the
CAES as it is responsible for the majority of the
power input and take-off. Making it efficient and
power-dense (hence lower cost) is challenging be-
cause of thermal effects since, without adequate
heat transfer, compressing/expanding air to/from
high pressure creates extremely high/low temper-
atures. As the compressed air is expected to stay
within the storage vessel for hours, the air would re-
turn to the ambient temperature before reuse, thus
losing the thermal energy associated with the ele-
vated temperature. We also assume that the ther-
mal reservoir is at the ambient temperature T0 .
We consider one stage of the C/E with an initial
pressure of P0 =7 bar, which is the pressure of an
intermediate buffer, and the final pressure of rP0
where r = 30. The pressure-volume curves of the
air during compression and expansion are shown
in Figure 2. The compression path Ac − Bc and
the expansion path Be − Ae are heat transfer lim-
ited, taking place when the compression/expansion
chamber is closed. The isobaric ejection, Bc − Cc ,
and the isobaric injection, Ce −Be , take place when
the valve to the storage vessel is open to the high
pressure storage. Paths Dc − Ac and Ae − De are
intake from and exhaust to the low pressure buffer
at pressure P0 . The case pressure of the C/E is
assumed to be at P0 so that input or output work
is
Z tc
Work = (P − P0 )dV.
The work input Win and the output work Wout for
arbitrary paths Ac − Bc and Be − Ae are illustrated
in Fig. 2 1 .
1 Note that injection and ejection works are included in
Win and Wout in this paper but are excluded in the defini-
tions in [30].
4
To be efficient, both the compression and expan-
sion P-V curves must be close to each other. They
must also be close to the isothermal P-V curve at
ambient temperature T0 if the heat sink and source
are also at T0 . The minimum amount of work input
and the maximum amount of work output, there-
fore, occur when the processes are isothermal at
the ambient temperature. We refer to this as the
storage energy:
Estore := Win (ζiso ) = Wout (ζiso ) (1)
where ζiso denotes the isothermal process. For ideal
gas, Estore = P0 Viso ln r where Viso is the volume
of the air at P0 at the ambient temperature. The
compression and expansion efficiencies are defined
as:
Estore Wout
ηcomp := ; ηexp := (2)
Win Estore
From the first law of thermodynamics,
dE = −P dV + Qdt (3)
where E(P, V ) is the internal energy of the air be-
ing compressed/expanded, −P dV is the differential
compression work, Q(h, A, ∆T ) is the heat transfer
(rate) which is a function of the heat transfer coeffi-
cient, h, the heat transfer area, A, and the temper-
ature difference between the air and the heat trans-
fer surfaces, ∆T . Note that for dE = 0 (so it is
isothermal for an ideal gas), heat transfer and work
are equal. The time it takes to trace a pressure-
volume (P-V) curve is given by:
Z Z
dE + P dV
tc/e = dτ = (4)
Q(h, A, ∆T )
The integration is taken over the path, Ac − Bc
or Be − Ae , of the compression/expansion process.
The storage power and output power, are defined
as:
Estore Wout
P owerstore := ; P owerout := (5)
te
(tc , te are the times for the compression and expan-
sion processes). They are inversely proportional to
the process times and depend on the heat transfer
rate Q in the C/E (or in the inter-cooling/warming
processes). Since the isobaric ejection/injection, in-
take/exhaust are not heat transfer limited, they can
occur infinitely fast and can, theoretically, take in-
finitesimal time. Note that the P − V curves deter-
mine the process efficiency and the heat that must
 P ing compressed into the porous medium and from
Work input the porous medium into the liquid piston. During
rPo Cc Bc Isothermal expansion, the expanding air pushes the liquid into
trajectory Energy stored the hydraulic motor, regenerating mechanical work.
Heat transfer from the porous medium warms the
expanding air and the porous medium is reheated
by the liquid piston as it fills the chamber at the
Actual trajectory beginning of the next expansion cycle. The non-
Adiabatic trajectory uniform shape of the C/E chamber and the con-
centration of the porous media at the top in Fig.
3 reflect the optimal configuration, as determined
P0 from numerical optimization [10]. In this paper,
Dc Ac
however, the experimental C/E will have a uniform
Viso Vc Vadi V0 V cylindrical shape.
P
Work output

rP0 Ce Be Isothermal Energy stored Low Pressure

trajectory High Pressure
Buffer Storage
Actual
trajectory

Adiabatic
trajectory

P0 De
Ae
V
Vc Vadi Ve Viso

Figure 2: Pressure-volume plot illustrating work input

(Win ), work output (Wout ) and stored energy (Estore ) dur-
ing compression (top) and expansion (bottom). The com-
pressed air is assumed, conservatively, to return to ambient
temperature inside the storage and the heat reservoir is as-
sumed to be at ambient temperature.
.
be transferred. A P-V curve that requires less heat
to be transferred (and hence less time and higher
power) deviates more from the isothermal curve and
the process becomes less efficient. The limiting case
is the adiabatic process. Hence, there is an inher-
ent trade-off between efficiency and power of a C/E.
For this reason, typical pneumatic compressors are
either inefficient, of low power, or both.
2.2. Liquid Piston Compressor/Expander (C/E)
Fig. 3 illustrates the proposed liquid piston C/E
with porous media inserts [27] to increase the heat
transfer Q(h, A, ∆T ) in Eqn. (3). During com-
pression, a liquid piston, supplied by the hydraulic
pump at the bottom, compresses the air above the
liquid surface. Heat is transferred from the air be-
5
Figure 3: Schematic of a near-isothermal liquid piston com-
pressor/expander with porous media inserts and optimized
shape.
Our previous low pressure (up to 10 bar) exper-
iments [27] have confirmed the efficacy of adding
porous media. The present paper aims to verify if
this finding continues to hold for the high pressure
(7bar to 210bar) stage liquid piston C/E and to
verify the effect of porous medium’s spatial distri-
bution.
3. Methods
3.1. Experimental Setup
The experimental setup, shown in Fig. 4, was
specifically designed to provide a well controlled
and instrumented air volume-time trajectory dur-
ing high pressure compression and expansion. The
compression/expansion chamber is a 304-stainless
steel cylinder (volume = 2.2 L, internal diameter =
76 mm, height of 483 mm) with 11.6 mm thick wall
capable of sustaining high pressure (210 bar with 4
times safety factor). The water piston is fed from
the bottom of the chamber by a water-compatible,
custom designed, single-acting hydraulic cylinder.
As water is added to the chamber, air above the wa-
ter piston is compressed and when water is removed
from the chamber, the air is allowed to expand.
The rod-side of the water hydraulic cylinder is con-
nected to a commercial oil-hydraulic cylinder us-
ing a pin-and-clevis connection. A servo-valve and
a hydraulic power supply (210bar, 75.7liter/min)
are used to control the motion of the oil-hydraulic
cylinder, which in turn controls the motion of the
water-hydraulic cylinder and the water flow into or
out of the compression/ expansion chamber.
A manual valve through the top cap is used to
introduce shop air (∼ 7 bar) and to exhaust air
to the atmosphere. The top cap is also remov-
able for adding porous media inserts. The com-
pression/expansion chamber is otherwise sealed. A
side tube with a sight glass is used to monitor the
initial height of the water piston. It is shut off from
the chamber at the beginning of the experiment.
The motion of the water hydraulic cylinder is
measured by a linear magnetic encoder. It is used
to infer the amount of water added to the compres-
sion chamber and hence the compressed air volume.
However, due to high pressure operation, the com-
pressibility of the water and the expansion of the
hoses and chamber are significant. The compressed
air volume V (x, P ) is therefore estimated as:
V (x, P ) = V0 (P0 ) − Vmeas (x)+
Vwater
(P − P0 ) − B · (P − P0 )
β tive elemental volume (REV) repeated throughout the ma-
where V0 (P0 ) is the chamber volume with the wa-
ter piston fully retracted at the initial pressure
P0 = 7bar, Vmeas (x) is the volume of incompress-
ible water that would have been added by the move-
ment of the water cylinder x. The correction terms
are, respectively, the compressibility of water, with
Vwater ≈ 2.7 liters being the total water volume in
the experiment, β =2.2 GPa being the bulk modu-
lus), and the expansion of the hoses and chamber
(with B =0.045 cm3 bar−1 ). The corrections are of
the order of 25 cm3 and 9 cm3 under normal exper-
imental conditions. The effect of entrained air was
investigated and was determined to be insignificant
as most air has been dissolved in the water at the
operating pressure (> 7bar).
A piezoresistive pressure transducer measures the
pressure of the gas directly at the top of the cham-
ber. As in [27], we assume that the pressure field is
uniform throughout the chamber.
Initial and final temperatures of the gas are mea-
sured using a type-K thermocouple located 12.7 mm
from the top cap of the chamber. Due to the rel-
atively slow-response time of the themocouple and
the presence of large thermal gradients during com-
pression and expansion, the thermocouple measure-
ment is considered trustworthy only under steady-
state conditions. Instead, the average temperature
of the gas is calculated from pressure and density
using a look up table based on real gas properties
[31].
(6) Figure 5: Interrupted plate style inserts. Top: Representa-
trix; Bottom left: polymer insert; Bottom right: stainless
steel insert.
The porous medium used in the present exper-
iments consists of a series of interrupted plates,
as shown in Fig. 5-top, described and studied in
[20, 22, 27, 30]. The plate thickness (t) is 0.8 mm,
the plate height (l) is 7.5 mm, and the plate spac-
ing (2b) is 2.5 mm. This porous medium was se-
lected for its relatively high specific surface area
(655m2 /m−3 ), high porosity (76%), low water hold
up, and promising flow features for heat exchange
and lower drag [27]. Two variations of this ge-
ometry are used with different materials. In the
first variation, the plates are manufactured from
an ABS-like photo-polymer using a 3D printing pro-
6
 Pressure Thermocouple
Transducer P
Pressure Shop
Liquid Piston Air
Compressor
Tank
Expander
Linear
Servo-
Encoder
valve
Oil Hydraulic Water Hydraulic
Cylinder Cylinder
Figure 4: (Left) Simplified schematic of the experimental setup. (Right) Picture of the compression/expansion chamber
cess. To improve the strength of the insert, an outer
ring is added to hold the plates in place. In the sec-
ond variation, the insert is manufactured from 316
stainless steel using a wire EDM without an outer
ring. The two insert types are shown in Fig. 5-
bottom.
Pressure measurements are accurate within 0.1%
(high pressure) - 2.1%(low pressure). Gas volume
measurement is accurate within 0.9% - 2.8%. De-
rived temperature (from pressure and volume) tem-
perature is accurate within 5K. From these values,
calculated compression and expansion efficiencies
are accurate within approximately 1%. For details
of the experimental setup and the uncertainty anal-
ysis, refer to [30].
3.2. Description of Tests Conducted
Three series of tests were conducted for compres-
sion and expansion with a pressure ratio of 30:1
(∼ 7 bar to 210 bar) at different constant volume
change rates:
1. Baseline with no porous media;
2. Uniformly distributed porous media;
3. Non-uniformly distributed porous media
Constant volumetric compression and expansion
rates ranged from 5 cm3 s−1 to 800 cm3 s−1 , result-
ing in compression and expansion times that vary
from 1 s to 450 s. The hydraulic servo-valve is con-
trolled using a proportional-integral (P-I) and feed-
forward controller to track the air volume-time tra-
jectories for the desired volume change rates. Be-
cause of the hydraulic power supply’s limitation,
7
the flow rates cannot be maintained when the pres-
sure approaches 210 bar. The use of constant rates
allows the effect of porous media to be studied in-
dependently of compression and expansion trajec-
tories. The effects of trajectories were studied ex-
perimentally in [11].
The uniformly distributed porous medium is con-
structed by stacking the 6cm tall stainless steel
porous media segment atop of 39cm plastic porous
media segments. All porous media segments con-
sist of the same interrupted plate geometry shown
in Fig. 5. Besides being more tolerable of high tem-
perature, the stainless steel porous medium at the
top of the chamber helps to maintain the medium’s
temperature close to the ambient temperature. Nu-
merical analysis [22] and experiment study (at low
pressure) [27] indicate that insert material does not
play a significant effect, generally, but the great-
est effect, if any, would be at the top of the cham-
ber. The metal porous medium was used as a pre-
caution that the ABS insert might melt. Since it
has higher thermal conductivity and capacitance,
its placement at the top will reduce the medium
temperature change.
Non-uniformly distributed geometry porous me-
dia are constructed by suspending the 6cm tall
stainless steel porous media segment at five dif-
ferent elevations in the chamber. The top of the
segment are at 14% (A), 72% (B), 86% (C), 97%
(D), 100% (E) of the chamber height, respectively.
Empty aluminum spacers, with a total height of
42.3cm, are placed below and above the metal
porous media segment to keep it in place. The 5
 A B C D E 300
A
B
250 C
Uniform D
E
200
Baseline

A/V 0 [m 2 /m 3 ]
Uniform
150

A
100 E
C B
D
50
Baseline

0
0 0.2 0.4 0.6 0.8 1
V/V 0

Figure 6: Five different non-uniformly distributed porous

media constructed with a 6cm height stainless steel inter-
rupted plate porous media segment placed at 14% (A), 72%
(B), 86% (C), 97% (D), 100% (E) from the top of the cham-
ber. Empty aluminium spacers segments with total height
of 42.3cm fill the rest of the chamber.
Figure 7: Heat transfer surface area per initial air volume
versus volume ratio for each porous media case. Maximum
A/V0 are: 55 m−1 (baseline), 860 m−1 (uniform), 158 m−1
(non-uniform).

the non-uniformly distributed porous media tests.

distributions are shown in Fig. 6. Since only 13%
of the volume is filled with porous media, the non-
uniformly distributed porous media has an overall
porosity of 96% (taking into account the volume of
an aluminum spacer needed to hold the segments
in place) compared to 76% for the uniformly dis-
tributed geometry case.
The uniformly distributed porous media adds
1.29 m2 of surface area, and each of the 5 non-
uniformly distributed porous media adds 0.17 m2 .
The total heat transfer surface area in the baseline,
including the top cap and the liquid piston surface,
is 0.12 m2 . The total heat transfer area normalized
by the initial air volume for each porous media case
are shown in Fig. 7.
For all tests, the initial air temperature and pres-
sure are measured directly. During the test, the in-
stantaneous average temperature and the internal
energy are calculated from density and pressure us-
ing real gas properties [31]. After reaching 210 bar,
the control system maintains the air pressure by
compressing the gas as it cools. Once the volume
rate of change is negligible and the measured and
calculated temperature are in agreement, the ex-
pansion process begins.
For compression, the initial pressures and tem-
peratures vary from 6.5 bar to 6.9 bar and 292 K to
300 K. The initial gas volume (after accounting for
porous media volume) varies from 2.21 L to 2.23 L
for the baseline tests, 1.59 L to 1.63 L for the uni-
form porous media tests and 1.890 L to 1.895 L for
8
For expansion, the initial pressure is 210 bar. The
(ambient) initial temperatures vary from 291 K to
306 K. The initial air volumes vary from 73.5 cm3
to 79.3 cm3 .
For both compression and expansion, data up to
the compression ratio or the expansion ratio of 30
from the initial pressures are used for processing.
4. Results
4.1. Baseline
The achieved compressed air volumetric change
rates for both compression and expansion are shown
in Fig. 8. They range from 5 cm3 s−1 to 800 cm3 s−1
and span compression times (to reach 30 times ini-
tial pressure) from 2.7 s to 428 s; and expansion
times (to reach 1/30-th of initial pressure of 210
bar) from 1.1 s to 414 s The target rates can in-
deed be controlled, except for the initial 0.1 s to
0.2 s where a ramp up and slight overshoot occurs.
The compression rates are also limited at high pres-
sures when the pressure drops across the servo valve
become too small to sustain the desired flows. The
flow limits are more severe for high target flows as
predicted by the orifice equation (shown in Fig. 8-
right). Nevertheless, the total volume change and
time duration over which the discrepancies occur
are small.
Figure 9-top shows the pressure-volume curves
for the baseline compression case. For each volume
change rate, the P-V curve approximates a straight
 Compression Expansion Compression
900
800 800
800 CC/s 800 CC/s 800 CC/s
400 CC/s 500 500 CC/s
400 800 600 CC/s
200 CC/s 200 CC/s 400 CC/s
Compression Rate (CC/s)

Compression Rate (CC/s)

Expansion Rate (CC/s)
200 100 CC/s 200 100 CC/s Calculated
50 CC/s 50 CC/s 700
100 20 CC/s 100 20 CC/s
10 CC/s 10 CC/s 600
50 5 CC/s 50 5 CC/s
500
20 20
400
10 10

5 5 300

2 2 200
0.2 0.5 1 2 5 10 20 50 100 200 500 0.2 0.5 1 2 5 10 20 50 100 200 500 0 50 100 150 200
Time (s) Time (s) Pressure (Bar)

Figure 8: Left: Compression volume flow rates versus time; Middle: Expansion volume flow rates versus time; Right: Com-
pression volume flow rates versus pressure.

Compression polytropic indices

1.4
Baseline compression Best Fit Polytropic Index
1.35

30 1.3
A
20 1.25 Baseline
Increasing Uniform
Compression NonUniform
1.2 B
Rate
10 C
1.15
Isothermal
0
PR = P/P

5 CC/s D
1.1
10 CC/s E
5
20 CC/s 1.05
50 CC/s
100 CC/s 1
0 200 400 600 800 1000
200 CC/s
2 Mean Compression Rate (cc/s)
400 CC/s
V0 = 2.21 - 2.24 L
800 CC/s
P = 6.5 - 6.9 Bar
Adiabatic 0
Figure 10: Baseline, uniformly distributed and non-
1
0.02 0.05 0.1 0.2 0.5 1 uniformly distributed porous media compression polytropic
V/V indices.
0

Uniform porous media compression

30 line in the log-log scale. This suggests that P V n ,
20
where n is the polytropic index, is approximately
constant throughout the process. For low volume
change rates, the curves are closer to the isother-
10
mal curve, and for larger volume change rates, the
0
PR = P/P

curves are closer to the adiabatic curve. This is

5 shown by the polytropic index n shifting from n = 1
Isothermal towards n = 1.35 in Fig. 10. Note that n = 1 cor-
12 CC/s
200 CC/s responds to isothermal compression and n ≈ 1.4
2 800 CC/s
V0 = 1.59 - 1.62 L
corresponds to adiabatic compression for air.
Adiabatic
P = 6.7 - 6.9 Bar
0
The P-V curves for the expansion process are
1 shown in Fig. 11-top. Similar to the compression
0.02 0.05 0.1 0.2 0.5 1
V/V
0 case, the P-V curves shift from being closer to the
isothermal curve towards the adiabatic curve as vol-
Figure 9: Compression pressure versus volume. Top: Base- ume change rates increase. The P-V curves in the
line; Bottom: With uniform distributed porous media (only log-log scale do not approximate straight lines as
a sample of volume change rates are shown to avoid clutter). well as in the compression case. This is so even
for the theoretical adiabatic curve and is due to the
non-ideal behavior of the expanding air that attains
9
 Baseline expansion P − V decrease rapidly initially to a minimum tempera-
1 ture and subsequently increase towards a tempera-
Isothermal
V0 = 73.5 - 79.3 CC
5 CC/s
ture lower than the initial temperature. The non-
P0 = 210 Bar
0.5 10 CC/s monotonic behavior is due to the power levels to-
20 CC/s
50 CC/s
wards the latter part of the expansion (lower pres-
Increasing
Expansion 100 CC/s sure and larger volume) being lower than the heat
Rate 200 CC/s
0.2 transfer, which is facilitated by an established tem-
0

500 CC/s
P/P

800 CC/s perature difference and increasing surface area for

Adiabatic
0.1 heat transfer. The maximum temperature change
ranges from -30K for slow expansion to -160K for
0.05
fast expansion. The minimum temperatures oc-
Non-Ideal cur at larger volume fractions for higher expansion
Behavior
0.03
1 2 5 10 20 30
rates. The temperatures at the end of expansion
V/V
0
are much closer to the initial temperature for slow
expansion than for fast expansion.
Uniform porous media expansion P − V
1
V0 = 53.8 - 54.9 CC Isothermal
P0 = 210 Bar 20 CC/s
0.5 200 CC/s Baseline compression T
800 CC/s
Adiabatic 2.2
800 CC/s
200 CC/s
0.2 2
0

100 CC/s
P/P

50 CC/s
1.8 20 CC/s
0.1 10 CC/s
5 CC/s
1.6
0
T/T

0.05 V0 = 2.21 - 2.24 L

1.4 T0 = 292 - 300 K
0.03
1 2 5 10 20 30
1.2
V/V
0

1
Figure 11: Expansion pressure versus volume: Top: baseline;
0 0.2 0.4 0.6 0.8 1
Bottom: Porous media uniformly distributed. V/V
0

Uniform porous media compression T

temperatures as low as 110K. For all volume change 1.4
rates, the initial P-V curves are close to the adia- 800 CC/s
1.35 200 CC/s
batic curve. This is likely because the power is high 50 CC/s
(since pressure is high) but heat transfer is low as 1.3 12 CC/s
the temperature difference has not been developed 1.25 V0 = 1.59 - 1.63 L
and there is little surface area for heat transfer. T = 287 - 293 K
0
0

1.2
T/T

The temperature-volume (T-V) curves for base-

1.15
line compression and expansion are shown in
Figs.12-top and 13-top. In the compression case, 1.1
temperature increases monotonically throughout 1.05
the process. This is facilitated by the situation
that during compression, input power increases as 1
0 0.2 0.4 0.6 0.8 1
pressure increases but the amount of heat trans- V/V
0
fer area decreases. At the low volume change
rate of 5 cm3 s−1 , the peak temperature is approx- Figure 12: Compression temperature versus volume. Top:
imately 30K above initial temperature, whereas at Baseline; Bottom: With uniform distributed porous media.
800 cm3 s−1 , the temperature rise is nearly 350K.
In the expansion case, the temperatures tend to
10
 Baseline expansion T tropic indices being closer to one than in the base-
1 line case, as shown in Fig. 10. With the porous
media, the same polytropic index (directly corre-
0.9 lated with efficiency) can be achieved at a higher
compression rate. For example, at the polytropic
0.8 V0 = 73.5 - 79.3 CC index of n = 1.1, the compression rate can be in-
T0 = 291 - 306 K
creased from 30 cm3 s−1 to over 500 cm3 s−1 .
0

0.7
T/T

5 CC/s
10 CC/s
The temperature-volume (T-V) curves for com-
0.6
20 CC/s pression and expansion with uniformly distributed
50 CC/s
100 CC/s
porous media are shown in Figs.12-bottom and 13-
0.5 200 CC/s bottom. For the compression cases, similar to the
500 CC/s
800 CC/s
baseline, the temperatures increase monotonically
0.4
0 5 10 15 20 25 30
as compression progresses. However, for similar
V/V
0
compression rates, the temperature rises are sig-
nificantly lower than for the baseline case. For ex-
Uniform porous media expansion T
ample, at the high rate of 800 cm3 s−1 , the temper-
1 ature rise is 100K compared to 350K for the base-
line; at the low rate of 10 cm3 s−1 to 12 cm3 s−1 , the
0.95
temperature rise is 29K compared to 58K for the
baseline. For the expansion cases, similar to the
0.9
V0 = 53.8 - 55.2 CC baseline, the temperatures decrease initially and
T0 = 289 - 298 K
then increase toward final temperatures lower than
0

0.85
T/T

20 CC/s the initial temperature. However, both the mini-

0.8
0.75
0.7
0 5 10 15 20
V/V
0 expansion rate of 20 cm3 s−1 , the minimum temper-
Figure 13: Expansion temperature versus volume. Top:
Baseline; Bottom: With uniform distributed porous media.
4.2. Uniform Distributions of Porous Media
Tests with uniformly distributed porous media
geometry were conducted similarly to the base-
line cases. Constant compression rates range from
12 cm3 s−1 to 800 cm3 s−1 , which correspond to
compression times of 2 s to 120 s. Constant ex-
pansion rates range from 20 cm3 s−1 to 800 cm3 s−1 ,
which correspond to expansion times of 1.9 s to 73 s.
The pressure-volume (P-V) curves for compres-
sion and expansion with uniformly distributed
porous media are shown in Figs. 9-bottom and 11-
bottom, respectively. Similar to the baseline, the
compression P-V curves approximate straight lines
in the log-log scale but the expansion P-V curves
do not. Compared to the baseline, for the same vol-
umetric change rates, both compression and expan-
sion P-V curves are much closer to the isothermal
curves. This is confirmed by the compression poly-
50 CC/s
100 CC/s
mum temperatures and the final temperatures are
200 CC/s higher compared to baseline with similar expansion
300 CC/s
500 CC/s
rates. For example, for the fast expansion rate of
800 CC/s 800 cm3 s−1 , the minimum and final temperatures
25 30 are 80K and 140K higher than baseline; for the slow
ature is 15K higher than baseline and the final tem-
peratures are similar. It is interesting to note that
whereas for the baseline, the final temperatures are
clearly lower with faster expansion rates, the final
temperatures with porous media are relatively close
to each other and without a clear ordering.
4.3. Non-uniformly distributed porous media
Tests with the five non-uniformly distributed
porous media were carried out similarly to the pre-
vious tests. The five distributions (Fig. 6) differ
in the axial locations of the 6cm tall porous media
within the chamber. Compression and expansion
rates range from 50 cm3 s−1 to 500 cm3 s−1 .
Figures 14 and 15 show samples of the pressure-
volume (P-V) curves with different porous media
distributions and rates. Similar to the baseline and
uniformly distributed porous media cases, the com-
pression curves approximate straight lines and in-
creasing the rates shifts the curves away from the
isothermal curves towards the adiabatic curves for
both compression and expansion. Comparison be-
tween different distributions indicate that with the
11
same rates, the P-V curves for the distributions Compression at 500cc/s
2.2
with the porous media segment closer to the top of
the chamber (e.g. E or D) are closer to the isother- 2 A
mal curves than those with the segments closer to B
Baseline A
B
the bottom (e.g. A or B). This result is confirmed 1.8
C
C
by the compression polytropic indices in Fig. 10. D

0
The trend is also seen in the temperature-volume E

T/T
1.6
D Baseline
(T-V) curves in Figs. 16-17 where the distributions Uniform
1.4 E
with porous media segments at the top have tem-
peratures that deviate least from the initial tem-
perature. For example, at 500 cm3 s−1 compression 1.2
Uniform
rate, maximum temperature deviations with distri-
1
butions A(or B) and E are +267K and +116K, re- 0 0.2 0.4 0.6 0.8 1
spectively; and at 500 cm3 s−1 expansion rate, they V/V
0
are -145K and -72K, respectively.
Figure 16: Compression temperature-volume curves at
500 cm3 s−1 compression rate with various non-uniformly
30 distributed porous media.
20

Expansion at 500cc/s
10
V0 = 1.89 L 1
0
PR = P/P

P0 = 6.80 - 6.85 Bar Uniform

5 0.9
Isothermal
E: 50 CC/s (h = 88.4%)
0.8 E
C: 500 CC/s (h = 68.0%)
T/T0

2 A: 100 CC/s (h = 68.0%)

A: 500 CC/s (h = 57.7%) 0.7 D
B
Adiabatic
C C
1 0.6 B
0.02 0.05 0.1 0.2 0.5 1 D
V/V E
0
0.5 Baseline
Baseline
Uniform
Figure 14: Samples of compression pressure-volume curves 0.4
with various non-uniformly distributed porous media and 5 10 15 20 25 30
rates. V/V0

Figure 17: Expansion temperature-volume curves at

500 cm3 s−1 expansion rate with various non-uniformly dis-
1 tributed porous media. (Distribution A was not run with
Isothermal
this flow rate but its behavior is expected to be similar to
E: 50 CC/s (h = 88.6%)
baseline.)
0.5 A: 50 CC/s (h = 69.7%)
E: 500 CC/s (h = 69.6%)
B: 500 CC/s (h = 51.4%) The spatial distribution of the porous media can
Adiabatic
0.2
cause the shape of the T-V curves to change (Figs.
0
P/P

16-17). Locating the porous media segment closer

to the top (e.g. E and D vs. A and B) tends to
0.1
V0 = 64.9 - 65.2 CC flatten the T-Vs to the extent that in compres-
P = 210 Bar sion, plateaus or slight inflections develop near a
0
0.05
volume ratio of 0.2, and for expansion, 3 inflection
0.03 points instead of one minimum occur and the mini-
1 2 5 10 20 25
V/V mum temperature locations are also shifted towards
0
smaller volume ratios. The shape change is the re-
Figure 15: Samples of expansion pressure-volume curves
sult of interactions between power and heat transfer
with various non-uniformly distributed porous media and capability. The latter is heavily affected by both the
rates. average available surface area as well as the location
12
of the surface area in relation to the temperature
distribution within the chamber. Comparing with
Fig.7, the inflection points in Figs. 16-17 are seen
to correlate with the locations of sharp changes in
surface area gradients.
Comparing the P-V and T-V diagrams for the
uniformly and non-uniformly distributed porous
media, it can be seen that distribution E, despite
having only 13% of added surface area, has sim-
ilar polytropic indices (Fig. 10) and peak tem-
perature deviations (Figs.16 and 17) as in the uni-
formly distributed case for each compression or ex-
pansion rate. On the other hand, distribution A
performs very similarly to the baseline case that
has no porous media.
Compression
1 and power density, i.e. any increase in power den-
0.95
Uniform
E parent. This trade-off is most severe with the base-
Compression Efficiency
5. Efficiency and Power
The results reported in Section 4 are now pre-
sented in terms of the C/E’s efficiency and stor-
age/recovery power density, defined in (2) and (5)
and Fig. 2. Power density is the power divided by
the total volume (maximum air volume and solid
volume of the porous media). The C/E volume
needed is the actual target power divided by the
power density at the given efficiency. Recall that
isothermal compression/expansion are 100% effi-
cient whereas adiabatic compression/expansion can
be infinitely fast and hence infinitely power dense.
For each test presented in Section 4, the efficiency
is plotted against its power density in Fig. 18. In-
creasing power density corresponds to higher com-
pression/expansion rate and shorter time. For each
porous medium, the trade-off between efficiency
sity is accompanied by decrease in efficiency, is ap-

0.9
Baseline D
line and least severe with the uniform porous media.
For compression, at 93% efficiency, uniform porous
0.85
Baseline
media increases the power density by an order of
0.8 Uniform magnitude from 5.4 kW m−3 to 55 kW m−3 ; or at
A 55 kW m−3 storage power, the efficiency is increased
0.75 B C
C
from 80% to 93%. For expansion, at 93% efficiency,
B
0.7
D uniform porous medium increases the power den-
E
A sity by an order of magnitude from 5.4 kW m−3 to
0.65 108 kW m−3 ; or at 108 kW m−3 storage power, the
10 3 10 4 10 5 10 6 efficiency is increased from 70% to 93%. At 85%
Storage Power density [W/m ] -3 efficiency, both the storage and recovery power den-
sities are increased by more than 20 times.
Expansion
Comparing with the different non-uniform distri-
1 butions, as suggested in the results in Section 4, the
distributions with the porous media segment closer
0.95 Uniform
E to the top (E vs. A) provide better efficiency at
0.9 the same power or higher power at the same ef-
Expansion Efficiency

D
Baseline
ficiency. Notice that distribution E is slightly less
0.85
efficient than uniform distribution; and distribution
Baseline
0.8
Uniform A is slightly more efficient than the baseline. This is
0.75
A C in spite of the approximate compression polytropic
B A
B
indices for distribution E being slightly lower than
C
0.7
D uniform distribution in Fig. 10. This discrepancy is
0.65
E due to the P-V curves in the log-log scale not being
truly straight lines so that the polytropic index is
0.6 only an approximate surrogate of efficiency.
10 3 10 4 10 5 10 6
-3 The objective of adding porous media is to in-
Recovery Power density [W/m ]
crease heat transfer surface area and heat trans-
Figure 18: Efficiency-Power Density relationships with con- fer rate. Given all other factors being the same,
stant compression or expansion rates and different porous the compression/expansion time would be inversely
media types. Top: compression; Bottom: expansion. proportional to surface area. This suggests that
13
normalizing storage power and recovery power by the heat transfer coefficients are estimated 2 and
specific surface area (surface area per total volume) plotted for the baseline and uniform distribution
may collapse the data in Fig. 18. The efficiency cases with efficiencies of 86% and 93 − 93.5% in
versus power normalized by the total surface area Figs. 20 and 21. Indeed, the heat transfer coeffi-
is shown in Fig. 19. cients are more similar for the high efficiency cases
(especially for compression) but they are higher for
the uniform distribution case than the baseline for
Compression the lower efficiency case.
1
Baseline
0.95 Uniform 500
D, E
Uniform A
Compression Efficiency

0.9 B
C 400
0.85
D 93.5% Baseline(5cc/s)
E 93.5% Uniform(50cc/s)
0.8
86% Baseline(20cc/s)

h [W/m 2-K]
C 300
0.75 86% Uniform(500cc/s)
B
0.7
Baseline 200
0.65 A

0.6
100
10 1 10 2 10 3 10 4 10 5
Storage Power / Area [W/m -2]

Expansion 0
0 0.2 0.4 0.6 0.8

1
V/V 0
Baseline
0.95 Uniform
Uniform
E A Figure 20: Baseline and Uniform distributed porous media
0.9 B estimated heat transfer coefficient h versus volume - Com-
Expansion Efficiency

C
0.85 pression at 93.5% and 86%.
B D
E
0.8
A
D
0.75 Expansion
C
0.7 500

0.65 Baseline
93% Baseline(5cc/s)
0.6 400 93% Uniform(100cc/s)
10 1 10 2
10 3
10 4
10 5 86% Baseline(20cc/s)
86% Uniform(500cc/s)
Recovery Power / Area [W/m -2]
h [W/m 2-K]

300

Figure 19: Efficiency versus Power normalized by the total

surface area, with constant compression or expansion rates
200
and different porous media types. Top: compression; Bot-
tom: expansion.
100

The normalization of the power density by the

0
total surface area is somewhat successful in col- 0 5 10 15 20 25 30

lapsing the results for the baseline and the uniform V/V 0

distribution cases, especially for the high efficiency

points. At lower efficiency points, the uniform dis- Figure 21: Baseline and Uniform distributed porous media
estimated heat transfer coefficient h versus volume - Expan-
tribution points have higher normalized power den- sion at 93% and 96%.
sity. Since the surface area is dominated by the
porous media, the increase in surface area is nearly As seen in Fig. 19, normalization by the total
uniformly applied at all air volumes. This suggests
that the heat transfer coefficients at the lower effi- 2 This is done by comparing the rate of change of inter-
ciency points with the uniform porous medium are nal energy, mechanical work, available surface area and an
higher than in the baseline. To see if this is true, estimated porous media temperature.

14
surface area cannot collapse the non-uniform dis- Compression
tribution results. This is expected since all five 1
non-uniform porous media distributions have the 0.95
Baseline
Uniform
same surface area. The non-uniform distributions Uniform
A

Compression Efficiency
0.9
differ in where the porous media segment is active B
C
in the process. For example, distribution E is active 0.85
D
D,E
nearly throughout the process whereas distribution 0.8 E

A is only active in the low pressure stage. For 0.75

C

this reason, a possible approach is to use a power B

0.7
weighted surface area for normalization: A
0.65 Baseline
R R
A(t)Power(t)dt A(v)P dv 0.6
Apwr = R = R (7) 10 1 10 2 10 3 10 4
Power(t)dt P dv Storage Power / Area [W/m -2]

where A(t) is the instantaneous heat transfer area Expansion

exposed to the air, including porous media surfaces 1

as well as side walls, top cap and liquid piston sur- 0.95 Uniform
face, Power(t) = P · V̇ is the mechanical power Baseline
0.9
Expansion Efficiency

and the integral is taken over the time to com- Baseline

Uniform
0.85 A
press/expand air from the initial pressure to the B
final pressure. As seen in (7), the power weighting 0.8 C
D,E
D
is equivalent to pressure weighting when the inte- 0.75 A, B E
C
gral is taken over volume. 0.7
The resulting efficiency versus power density nor-
0.65
malized by power weighted surface area is shown in
Fig. 22. The data for all the non-uniformly dis- 0.6
10 1 10 2 10 3 10 4
tributed surface area cases somewhat collapse, al- Recovery Power / Area [W/m -2]
though not completely. Note also that distributions
A, B cluster with the baseline and D, E cluster with Figure 22: Efficiency versus Power / weighted surface area
the uniform porous media cases. (Apwr ), with constant compression or expansion rates and
different porous media types. Top: compression; Bottom:
expansion.

6. Discussion
The experiments reported above suggest several
key empirical findings.
First, for the empty chamber baseline and each
porous media type, the trade-off between efficiency
and power density is apparent (see e.g. Fig. 18).
This implies that to improve efficiency, it is neces-
sary to operate the C/E more slowly and to increase
the size to meet the power demand. The quanti-
tative results can be used to guide how a system
(for the porous media and trajectory types) can be
scaled up for a given desired efficiency and power.
Second, our results show that this inherent trade-
off can be mitigated greatly by introducing porous
media. Deploying the 2.5mm interrupted plate heat
exchangers [20] uniformly in the chamber of the liq-
uid piston compressor/exchanger can increase effi-
ciency by nearly 20% or increase power by an order
of magnitude without sacrificing efficiency or size.
15
Third, as too much porous media has its own
drawbacks, such as cost, the solid material of porous
media occupying air space (as determined by the
overall porosity), increasing liquid friction, and pos-
sibility of liquid hold up, it is advantageous to
strategically locate a small amount of porous mate-
rial. Our experimental results show that it is more
effective to deploy the porous media at the top of
the chamber than towards the bottom. Filling the
top 13% of the chamber with porous media, i.e. in-
creasing porosity from 76% to 96%, is nearly as ef-
fective as if the whole chamber is filled. This result
is consistent with numerical studies in [11, 28].
Although these trends are expected, this paper is
the first to provide experimental confirmation and
quantification at the high pressure of 210 bar, which
is the intended operating pressure of a liquid piston
isothermal compressor/expander.
As to the mechanism by which the porous me-
dia improve the efficiency-power density trade-off,
the fact that the baseline curve and the uniform
porous media curve nearly collapse onto each other
after normalizing the power by surface area in Fig.
19 suggests that increasing surface area is indeed
a predominant contributor. However, because the
curves do not exactly coincide at lower efficiency
points, it indicates that the porous media also in-
crease the average heat transfer coefficient 3 This is
confirmed in Fig. 20. One reason is that in the in-
terrupted plate porous media, the boundary layers
are repeatedly interrupted [22, 20]. This aspect is
absent from the baseline cases where the geometry
is essentially a cylinder. More significantly, equiva-
lent efficiencies in Fig. 20 occur at significantly dif-
ferent compression rates: the rates for the uniform
porous media cases are much higher than those for
the baseline. The higher air velocities naturally in-
crease the heat transfer coefficients, especially in
the interrupted plate geometry in which separation
and wakes are present.
One reason why the porous media is more effec-
tive at the top of the chamber than at the bottom
is that the porous media at the top is available for
nearly the entire process whereas the porous me-
dia at the bottom is only available at the beginning
of compression and at the end of expansion when
the pressure and power are also low, and therefore,
heat transfer is not as needed. The proposed power
weighted surface area Apwr in (7) captures both
the concepts of availability and needs. Normalizing
power by Apwr is somewhat successful in collapsing
the data for the various non-uniform distributions
(Fig.22). Another reason for porous media at the
top being more useful is that the air temperature
there tends to be hottest during compression and
coldest during expansion. This is due to the air ve-
locity being highest at the bottom of the chamber
and lowest at the top. Adding porous media at the
top therefore can help improve heat transfer where
it is most needed.
The results presented in this paper are consis-
tent with those obtained for low pressure (10 bar)
in [27]. There, it was also found that efficiency-
power density curves for different types and geome-
tries of uniformly distributed porous media collapse
3 Note from Fig. 9, in both the baseline and uniform dis-
tribution cases, the compression processes are nearly poly-
tropic. This implies that at the same efficiency, the P-V or
T-V curves are similar. This rules out temperature effect
when comparing two processes with similar efficiencies.
16
close to each other when the power is normalized
by the surface area. The normalized curve for the
baseline (empty), is also close to, but lies below,
those for the porous media cases. Expansion tests
in [27] were done using fixed orifices to control flow
rates whereas in the present paper, the expansion
rates are controlled to be constant. Despite this dif-
ference, the qualitative behavior during expansion
tests are also similar. In particular, the P-V curves
are close to the adiabatic curve at the beginning
of expansion but shift towards the isothermal curve
at the latter portion of expansion. Non-uniformly
distributed porous media were not investigated in
[27] but are studied here.
Despite the energy per cycle in the high pressure
system being 10 times that of the low pressure sys-
tem, the power densities are quite similar in both
the low and high pressure experiments. For exam-
ple, with the same porous medium, power densities
are in the range 100 kW m−3 to 200 kW m−3 for ef-
ficiency of 90-93% in both high and low pressure
tests. The similarity in power densities is a strong
suggestion that the heat transfer capability is the
key determinant of power density. It also implies
that in a 2-stage C/E, the low pressure stage should
run at a higher frequency than the high pressure
stage.
Note that the orifice flow profile (flow rate de-
creases with pressure) in the low pressure tests
were counter to the optimized trajectories (see e.g.
[12, 7, 8]) in which rates tend to be inversely pro-
portional to pressure. This is a possible explanation
that the porous media increases power density only
3 times in expansion but by a order of magnitude
in compression. In the high pressure experiments
where the rates are uniform, the improvements in
compression and expansion are similar.
The greatest challenge in the experiments re-
ported in this paper is in measuring the compressed
air volume accurately. Maximum pressure measure-
ment error is 0.21bar which is not too significant.
Because of the large compression ratio, the final air
volume is very small. A small error in volume esti-
mation stemming from estimates of initial volume,
addition of liquid or compressibility of the appa-
ratus, can represent a large percentage error. To
minimize volume measurement error, the apparatus
was calibrated precisely. The errors in various de-
rived quantities were obtained and reported in [30].
In particular, temperature error is 5K or lower for
most cases, and uncertainties in the work input and
output are 1.6%.
 This paper has only investigated the performance
of the liquid piston C/E under the constant volume
change rate regime and with only one design of the
porous media. Performance improvement with op-
timized trajectories was experimentally confirmed
for compression in [11] using the same apparatus
but without any porous media. Optimized trajec-
tories are expected to further increase the power
density by 200-300% [10]. A natural next step
is to experimentally test the optimized trajectory
together with porous media. Optimized trajec-
tories (for both compression and expansion) typi-
cally involve fast rates during the low pressure and
slow rates during high pressure. Because applying
porous media alone can already attain quite high
efficiency even at the highest flow rates, a much
higher flow rate beyond the capability of our cur-
rent setup is necessary to demonstrate the further
increase in power density with optimized trajecto-
ries.
The 2.5mm interrupted plate porous medium
tested in this paper was selected based on a com-
bination of properties, such as good heat transfer
performance (as confirmed by experiments [27] and
numerical analysis [20, 22]), low drag, high poros-
ity, low propensity for water hold up, and cost. Re-
cently, it has been proposed that by taking advan-
tage of anisotropy, the heat transfer property can
be further improved with minimal penalty on drag
[32]. It would be useful to test this new porous
media design experimentally.
The experiments have produced much data to
compare with the analytical and numerical models
such as from [20, 22, 10]. This comparison, however,
is beyond the scope of the current paper. Some pre-
liminary efforts and findings can be found in [30].
The overall results and trends are consistent, but
further work is needed.
7. Conclusion
This paper has confirmed that the heat transfer
capability of the air compressor/expander is the key
determinant of its power density at a specific effi-
ciency. The 2.5mm interrupted plate porous media
inserted into a liquid piston compressor/expander
is shown to remain effective, even in high pressure
(210bar), increasing power density by 10-fold with-
out sacrificing efficiency. The porous media can
also be strategically located at the top of the com-
pression/expansion chamber for maximum effect.
17
While the predominant benefit arises from the in-
crease in heat transfer area, the porous media also
increase the heat transfer coefficient at the same ef-
ficiency. Moreover, the added surface area can be
more useful if matched with the load.
The performance improvement shown can be an
enabler for a cost-effective, isothermal compressed
air energy storage system needed for integrating re-
newable energies into the electrical grid. Other uses
for the compressor/expander can include gas liq-
uefaction, compressing natural gas for vehicles or
for compressing carbon dioxide in carbon seques-
tration.
Future work include experimentally demonstrat-
ing the benefit of porous media and optimized com-
pression/expansion trajectories, and comparing ex-
perimental results with modeling efforts.
Acknowledgment
This work was performed with support from
the USA National Science Foundation under grant
EFRI-1038294 and the Institute for Renewable En-
ergy and Environments (IREE) at the University of
Minnesota under grant RM-0027-11.
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