D'Aguanno, Bruno, Mani, Karthik, Grace, Nirmala and Floris, Andrea (2018) Thermostatic properties of nitrate molten salts and their solar and eutectic mixtures. Scientific Reports, 8 . p. 10485. ISSN 978-0-470-68617-1
Full content URL: https://doi.org/10.1038/s41598-018-28641-1
Documents |
|
|
PDF
s41598-018-28641-1.pdf - Whole Document Available under License Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International. 3MB |
Item Type: | Article |
---|---|
Item Status: | Live Archive |
Abstract
Nitrate molten salts are extensively used for sensible heat storage in Concentrated Solar Power (CSP)
plants and thermal energy storage (TES) systems. They are the most promising materials for latent heat
storage applications. By combining classical molecular dynamics and differential scanning calorimetry
experiments, we present a systematic study of all thermostatic, high temperature properties of pure
KNO3 and NaNO3 salts and their eutectic and ”solar salt” mixtures, technologically relevant. We first
study, in solid and liquid regimes, their mass densities, enthalpies, thermal expansion coefficients and
isothermal compressibilities. We then analyze the cP and cV specific heats of the pure salts and of
the liquid phase of the mixtures. Our theoretical results allow to resolve a long-standing experimental
uncertainty about the cP(T) thermal behaviour of these systems. In particular, they revisit empirical laws
on the cP(T) behaviour, extensively used at industrial level in the design of TES components employing
the ”solar salt” as main storage material. Our findings, numerically precise and internally consistent, can
be used as a reference for the development of innovative nanomaterials based on nitrate molten salts,
crucial in technologies as CSP, waste heat recovery, and advanced adiabatic compressed air energy
storage.
Keywords: | molten salts, molecular dynamics, specific heat, thermal energy storage, energy storage, nitrate salts, Computational modeling |
---|---|
Subjects: | F Physical Sciences > F343 Computational Physics F Physical Sciences > F200 Materials Science |
Divisions: | College of Science > School of Mathematics and Physics |
ID Code: | 32526 |
Deposited On: | 29 Jun 2018 09:54 |
Repository Staff Only: item control page