Application of geometric models for calculation of viscosity and density of LiNO3 and CsNO3 based ternary nitrate salt systems

Abstract

Determining the thermophysical properties of ternary molten salt systems accurately is a challenging task as it incorporates experimentation at high temperatures, cost of running the experiments, and complexity due to material interactions. Modelling of these properties can overcome most of these difficulties. In this paper, various geometric models were used for determining the density and viscosity of two ternary nitrate salt systems viz. LiNO3–NaNO3–KNO3 and CsNO3–NaNO3–KNO3. On comparison, it was observed that the General Solution Model (GSM) developed by K.C. Chou predicts better results for both density and viscosity of the salts. The density prediction of the salt systems using GSM recorded an error less than 2%, while the prediction of viscosity showed a variation of 17–20%.