Heat Transfer and Latent Heat Storage in Inorganic Molten Salts for Concentrating Solar Power Plants
- Terrafore Inc.
A key technological issue facing the success of future Concentrating Solar Thermal Power (CSP) plants is creating an economical Thermal Energy Storage (TES) system. Current TES systems use either sensible heat in fluids such as oil, or molten salts, or use thermal stratification in a dual-media consisting of a solid and a heat-transfer fluid. However, utilizing the heat of fusion in inorganic molten salt mixtures in addition to sensible heat , as in a Phase change material (PCM)-based TES, can significantly increase the energy density of storage requiring less salt and smaller containers. A major issue that is preventing the commercial use of PCM-based TES is that it is difficult to discharge the latent heat stored in the PCM melt. This is because when heat is extracted, the melt solidifies onto the heat exchanger surface decreasing the heat transfer. Even a few millimeters of thickness of solid material on heat transfer surface results in a large drop in heat transfer due to the low thermal conductivity of solid PCM. Thus, to maintain the desired heat rate, the heat exchange area must be large which increases cost. This project demonstrated that the heat transfer coefficient can be increase ten-fold by using forced convection by pumping a hyper-eutectic salt mixture over specially coated heat exchanger tubes. However,only 15% of the latent heat is used against a goal of 40% resulting in a projected cost savings of only 17% against a goal of 30%. Based on the failure mode effect analysis and experience with pumping salt at near freezing point significant care must be used during operation which can increase the operating costs. Therefore, we conclude the savings are marginal to justify using this concept for PCM-TES over a two-tank TES. The report documents the specialty coatings, the composition and morphology of hypereutectic salt mixtures and the results from the experiment conducted with the active heat exchanger along with the lessons learnt during experimentation.
- Research Organization:
- Terrafore Inc.
- Sponsoring Organization:
- USDOE; USDOE EE Office of Solar Energy Technology (EE-2A)
- Contributing Organization:
- Terrafore Inc., University of California Riverside, Jet Propulsion Labs, Pratt & Whitney Rocketdyne
- DOE Contract Number:
- FG36-08GO18148
- OSTI ID:
- 1089923
- Report Number(s):
- DOE-GO18148
- Country of Publication:
- United States
- Language:
- English
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