Concrete Hot Water Tanks for Solar Energy Storage

A brief report is given on the design and construction of some large concrete tanks for the seasonal storage of solar energy built as pilot projects in Germany. The first series of prestressed concrete hot-water tanks were built in 1995/96 with normal strength concrete and contained an inner liner of stainless steel. Based on the results of a research project on the density of high performance concrete (HPC) a hot-water tank without an inner steel liner was built in Hannover for the EXPO 2000. In further developments the use of ultra-high performance fiber reinforced concrete (UHPFRC) for hot-water tanks was investigated in a research program and several tanks of different sizes were designed out of this new promising material.