Grant: Alliance Grants

There are roughly 292 remote communities in Canada, of which 170 are identified as Indigenous (i.e., comprising First Nations, Innuit and/or Métis peoples). The lack of connectivity experienced in these communities has caused a reliance on diesel fuel (which is expensive, polluting, and detrimental to human health) to provide most of the inhabitants' energy needs (heating being the largest). A key strategy for displacing diesel heating fuel use involves switching to renewable energy-based technologies such as solar thermal collectors. However, to fully harness this resource (especially at more northern latitudes which experience limited sunlight during the winter), long-term seasonal thermal energy storage is required. Although conventional seasonal storage technologies such as geothermal-based systems can operate efficiently in Canada's southern regions, their implementation in the Arctic is highly unfeasible due to permafrost limitations. With this background as the motivation for the proposed research, the objective is to explore and advance the design and implementation (from both engineering and policy standpoints) of a novel seasonal solar-driven adsorption thermal energy storage concept as a potential low-carbon and low-cost space heating solution for Canada's remote Indigenous communities. The proposed system is advantageous in that it is modular, exhibits near-zero heat losses over extended periods of time, and is impervious to permafrost since it is located above ground. The research will be useful to government, academia, and the private sector for guiding policy development, informing scientific inquiry, and providing potential pathways for commercialization, respectively. The full proposed system design will be assessed via the development of a numerical model which will be validated by experimental apparatus located at both Carleton University and Cambridge Bay, Nunavut. The complimentary goal is to train a group of HQP in the understanding and modeling of practical, multi-device, hybrid energy systems, as these skills will be needed as part of Canada's transition to a sustainable society.