Analysis of Flowing and Heat Transfer of Commercial Molten Nitrate in Porous Foundation Material

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  • State Key Laboratory of Clean Energy Utilization, Institute for Thermal Power Engineering, Zhejiang University, Hangzhou 310027, China

Online published: 2023-11-27

Supported by

This work was supported by the National Natural Science Foundation of China (52036008).

Abstract

The leakage accident of molten salt in the thermal storage tank will cause the shutdown and enormous economic losses of Concentrated Solar Power plants. This study investigates the heat transfer and flow characteristic of commercial molten nitrates leaking in the thermal state porous foundation material. The migration width and depth of three molten nitrates, Solar Salt (60 wt% NaNO3-40 wt%KNO3), Hitec XL (7 wt% NaNO3-45 wt% KNO3-48 wt% Ca(NO3)2) and Hitec (7 wt% NaNO3-53 wt%KNO3-40 wt%NaNO2), are obtained at different operating temperatures. Experimental results indicate that the temperature rising rate of foundation material in the nitrate leaking process has a trend of first increasing rapidly and then decreasing, and then it increases slightly as the depth increases. The temperature rising rate increases obviously with increasing operating temperature of the molten salt. With the increase of the operating temperature, the distances from the storage tank bottom to solid salt in foundation and the total migration depths both increase obviously, while the average migrating widths change slightly. At the same operating temperature, the temperature rising rate of the foundation material where Hitec XL and Hitec salt leak is significantly greater than that with Solar Salt, which is closely related to the melting points of molten salts. The migration depth of Hitec is 95.03% greater than that of Solar Salt and 19.11% larger than that of Hitec XL at the operating temperature of 300°C. Compared with Hitec XL, the leakage of Hitec with a smaller viscosity has a larger temperature rising rate and a wider and deeper transporting range during the leakage process. This work could guide the installation locations of the leak detection devices for high temperature storage tank and the environmental treatment of leaking accident.

Cite this article

SHI Hua, ZHOU Hao, MENG Hanxiao, LV Laiquan, LIU Tianxiao, ZUO Yuhang, CEN Kefa . Analysis of Flowing and Heat Transfer of Commercial Molten Nitrate in Porous Foundation Material[J]. Journal of Thermal Science, 2023 , 32(4) : 1455 -1465 . DOI: 10.1007/s11630-023-1804-0

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