Enhancing thermal energy stroage of the solar-thermal power plant using nanocrystals
Overview
Yuan-Da Chu 朱袁達
So far solar energy is mainly a day-time energy source. A solar-thermal power plant is designed to collect and store the sunlight as thermal energy. Thus the solar energy can be harvested when the sunlight is not available. Current solar thermal power plants use the molten salt as the thermal energy storage material which has a specific heat of ~ 1.2 kJ/kg*K.
So far solar energy is mainly a day-time energy source. A solar-thermal power plant is designed to collect and store the sunlight as thermal energy. Thus the solar energy can be harvested when the sunlight is not available. Current solar thermal power plants use the molten salt as the thermal energy storage material which has a specific heat of ~ 1.2 kJ/kg*K.
(a) SEM and (b) TEM images of pure Sn NPs. The inset in (b) shows the corresponding selected area diffraction patterns, for which each plane has been indexed. (c) SEM and (d) TEM images of Sn/SiOx core–shell NPs. The corresponding SEM image is shown in the inset.
(a) DSC curves of Sn/SiOx core–shell and pure Sn NPs. (b) Latent heat exhaustion of pure Sn and Sn/SiOx core–shell NPs at continuous thermal cycles. (c) HC measurements of the HITEC salt mixed with different concentrations of Sn/SiOx NPs from 1, 3, and 5 wt% at different heating temperatures. (d) The endurance of HC tests for the HITEC salt mixed with 5 wt% Sn/SiOx core–shell NPs. An enhanced HC of 2.03 J g−1 K−1 was measured.
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Schematic of the formation of the SiOx layer outside Sn NPs. (3-Aminopropyl)-trimethoxysilane [APTMS] was used as a precursor to form the SiOx shell layer in a pH value of 4–5.
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Current Work
We propose a new method to enhance the heat capacity of the molten salt by embedding the nanocrystals into the molten salt [1, 2].
[1] Ming-Chang Lu, and Chien-Hsun Huang, "Specific Heat Capacity of Molten-salt based Alumina Nanofluid," Nanoscale Research Letters,Vol. 8, pp. 292-299, 2013.
[2] Chih-Chung Lai, Wen-Chih Chang, Wen-Liang Hu, Zhiming M. Wang, Ming-Chang Lu, and Yu-Lun Chueh ,"Solar-Thermal Energy harvesting Scheme: Enhanced heat capacity of molten HITEC salt mixed with Sn/SiOx core-shell nanoparticles," Nanoscale Research Letters, Accepted, 2014.
[1] Ming-Chang Lu, and Chien-Hsun Huang, "Specific Heat Capacity of Molten-salt based Alumina Nanofluid," Nanoscale Research Letters,Vol. 8, pp. 292-299, 2013.
[2] Chih-Chung Lai, Wen-Chih Chang, Wen-Liang Hu, Zhiming M. Wang, Ming-Chang Lu, and Yu-Lun Chueh ,"Solar-Thermal Energy harvesting Scheme: Enhanced heat capacity of molten HITEC salt mixed with Sn/SiOx core-shell nanoparticles," Nanoscale Research Letters, Accepted, 2014.