The Experimental Research and Numerical Simulation on Thermal Properties of Molten Salt at Melting Point

Abstract

The use of phase-change materials for latent heat storage is a new type of environmentally-friendly energy-saving technologies. Molten salts, one kind of phase-change materials, which have high latent heats, and whose phase transition temperatures match the high temperatures of heat engines, are the most widely used high-temperature phase-change heat storage materials. However, the heat transfer at solid/liquid phase interface belongs to Micro/Nanoscale Heat transfer, lots of the thermal properties of molten salt at melting point is difficult to test. In this investigation, based on the theory that the thermal conductivity can be determined by measuring the speed of the propagation of the solid/liquid phase interface during phase change, a set of system is developed to investigate the thermal conductivity of molten salts at liquid/solid phase transformation point. Meanwhile, mathematical calculation is applied to intuitively simulate the melting and solidifying process in the phase change chamber, by which the error could be analyzed and partly corrected and the result precision could also be increased. And a series of verification experiments have been performed to estimate the precision and the applicability of the measuring system to evaluate the feasibility of the method and measuring system. This research will pave the way to the follow-on research on heat storage at high temperature in industry.