Entry Date:
May 4, 2011

High-Temperature Molten Salts for Nuclear and Solar Power Applications

Principal Investigator Jacopo Buongiorno


Since the primary costs in nuclear or solar power systems are in the plant hardware, it is imperative that the heat-to-electricity conversion occurs with high efficiency in these systems. This requirement favors the use of a high-temperature heat transfer medium, and in the case of solar power, also a high-temperature storage medium.

Molten salts are promising heat transfer and storage media, due to their high thermal capacity and relative chemical inertness at high temperatures, up to 1000°C. At such high temperatures, thermal radiation transport within the molten salts, which are semi-transparent media, becomes very significant, and must be accounted for in the thermal analysis of the system. Therefore, in the process of developing molten salt media for advanced high-temperature nuclear and solar energy applications, we are measuring the attenuation of light (from IR to UV) within various molten salts, e.g., chloride salts like NaCl-KCl and carbonate salts like Li2CO3-Na2CO3-K2CO3.