Liquid Air Energy Storage (LAES) uses off-peak and/or renewable electricity to produce liquid air (charging). When needed, the liquid air expands in an expander to generate electricity (discharging). The produced liquid air can be transported from renewable energy rich areas to end-use sites using existing road, rail and shipping infrastructures. The discharging process occurs at the end-use sites in this case and is therefore decoupled from the charging process (denoted as decoupled LAES). One of key challenges associated with the decoupled LAES is the recovery of cryogenic energy released by liquid air during the discharging process. Here we propose a cryogenic thermoelectric generation (Cryo-TEG) method to effectively recover the cryogenic energy. Both thermodynamic and economic analyses are carried out on the Cryo-TEG. The results are compared with conventional cryogenic Rankine cycles (Cryo-RC). Additionally, system performance of the decoupled LAES integrated with the Cryo-TEG is also evaluated for combined power and cooling supply. The results show that the Cryo-TEG has a thermal efficiency of ∼ 9%, which is much lower than the Cryo-RC (∼39.5%). However, the Cryo-TEG gives a much better economic performance especially as the cooling capacity of liquid nitrogen is below 8.6 MW: the levelized cost of electricity of the Cryo-TEG could be as low as 0.0218 $/kWh, ∼4 times cheaper than that of the Cryo-RC. This demonstrates that the Cryo-TEG is more favourable for cryogenic energy recovery in the small-scale decoupled LAES. With the Cryo-TEG, the decoupled LAES system could achieve an electrical round trip efficiency of ∼ 29% and a combined cooling and power efficiency of ∼ 50%.

液态空气储能 (LAES) 使用非高峰和/或可再生电力来生产液态空气（充电）。需要时，液态空气在膨胀机中膨胀以发电（放电）。可以使用现有的公路、铁路和航运基础设施将产生的液态空气从富含可再生能源的地区运输到最终使用地点。在这种情况下，放电过程发生在最终使用地点，因此与充电过程分离（表示为分离的 LAES）。与解耦 LAES 相关的关键挑战之一是在放电过程中回收液态空气释放的低温能量。在这里，我们提出了一种低温热电发电（Cryo-TEG）方法来有效地回收低温能量。热力学和经济分析均在 Cryo-TEG 上进行。将结果与常规低温朗肯循环 (Cryo-RC) 进行比较。此外，还评估了与 Cryo-TEG 集成的解耦 LAES 的系统性能，用于组合电源和冷却供应。结果表明，Cryo-TEG 的热效率约为 9%，远低于 Cryo-RC（~39.5%）。然而，Cryo-TEG 提供了更好的经济性能，尤其是当液氮的冷却能力低于 8.6 MW 时：Cryo-TEG 的平准化电力成本可低至 0.0218 $/kWh，比其便宜约 4 倍Cryo-RC 的那个。这表明 Cryo-TEG 更有利于小规模解耦 LAES 中的低温能量回收。使用 Cryo-TEG，