Heat Exchange Analysis on Latent Heat Thermal Energy Storage Systems Using Molten Salts and Nanoparticles as Phase Change Materials

The increase of carbon dioxide emissions is the most important contributor to climate change. A better use of produced energy, increasing systems efficiency and using renewable sources, can limit them. A key technological issue is to integrate a thermal energy storage (TES). It consists in stocking thermal energy through the heating/cooling of a storage material for future needs. Among various technologies, latent heat TES (LHTES) provides high energy storage density at constant temperature during melting/solidification of storage media. The bottleneck in the use of typical PCMs is their low thermal conductivity. To improve the heat exchange between heat transfer fluid and PCM, three methods are possible and here experimentally analyzed: conductivity systems enhancements; convective flows promotion in liquid phase; and improvement of PCM thermal properties including small amounts of nanoparticles. CFD models were used to evaluate physical phenomena that are crucial for optimized LHTES systems design. The study of the heat exchange mode allowed some useful indications to achieve an optimized LHTES, taking advantage by convective flows and conductivity promotion systems. The use of NEPCM, to maximize the stored energy density and realize compact systems, makes necessary the improvement of its thermal diffusivity. These will be the future research topics

Isothermal kinetics of char-coal gasification with pure CO2

The gasification of two kinds of sub-bituminous char-coal in pure CO2 atmosphere has been performed in a thermogravimetric analyzer. The effect of gasification temperature (800-1100 degrees C) and particle size (0.125-1.4 mm) has been investigated. Different classical models (homogeneous model, shrinking-core model) have been adopted in order to determine the kinetic constants and the corresponding activation energies. We observed the necessity of including the effect of diffusion through the ash layer and of the non-uniform distribution of solid reactant in order to have a complete description of the conversion vs time curves. (C) 2014 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved

Rheology of Solar-Salt based nanofluids for concentrated solar power. Influence of the salt purity, nanoparticle concentration, temperature and rheometer geometry

Solar Salt-based nanofluids have attracted significant scientific interest in recent years due to their improved thermal properties, making them strong candidates as thermal energy storage materials and/or heat transfer fluids in CSP plants. There have been reports on increased specific heat due to the addition of nanoparticles, however, there is a lack of comprehensive information on other essential properties affecting the heat transfer, such as the viscosity. This article concerns the rheological behaviour of nanofluids made of Solar Salt (mass percentage at 60% NaNO3 – 40% KNO3) as the base fluid and silica or alumina nanoparticles as additives. The evolution of these nanofluids viscosity as a function of the shear rate (1–1000 s−1) at a temperature range of 250–400 °C was measured and analysed. The impact of the salt purity (refined or industrial grade), the nanoparticle concentration (0.5–1.5 wt%) and the rheometer measuring configuration (coaxial cylinder or parallel plate) are examined. The results showed in general a Newtonian behaviour of the nanofluids with independency of the rheometer configuration. The relationship between the viscosity and the temperature follows an Arrhenius model. The influence of the nanoparticle concentration on the viscosity of the refined grade Solar Salt is analysed according to the Maron-Pierce and Kriegher-Dougherty models for the nanofluids containing alumina and silica nanoparticles respectively, due to their different shape

Round robin test on the measurement of the specific heat of solar salt

Ponència presentada a SOLARPACES 2016: International Conference on Concentrating Solar Power and Chemical Energy Systems. Abu Dhabi, United Arab Emirates, 11–14 October, 2016Solar salt (SS), a well-known non-eutectic mixture of sodium nitrate (60% w/w) and potassium nitrate (40% w/w), is commonly used either as Thermal Energy Storage (TES) material (double tank technology) or Heat Transfer Fluid (HTF) (solar tower) in modern CSP plants worldwide. The specific heat (cp, kJ kg−1 °C−1) of SS is a very important property in order to support the design of new CSP Plants or develop novel materials based on SS. A high scientific effort has been dedicated to perform a suitable thermophysical characterization of this material. However, there is still a great discrepancy among the cp values reported by different authors1. These differences may be due to either experimental errors (random or systematic) or divergences in the starting material (grade of purity, presence of impurities and/or water). In order to avoid the second source of uncertainty (the starting material), a Round Robin Test (RRT) was proposed starting from a common material. In this way, the different methods from each laboratory could be compared. The study should lay the foundations for the establishment of a systematic procedure for the measurement of the specific heat of this kind of materials. Nine institutions, research centers and companies, accepted the proposal and are contributing with their results