Why Molten Salt Won’t Be the Future of Industrial Heat Storage
“Molten salt has long been positioned as the workhorse of high temperature thermal storage. Its story began with research in the 1980s and early deployment in Spanish parabolic trough plants in the 2000s. The technology was appealing on paper. A mixture of sodium and potassium nitrate has a high heat capacity, a density almost twice that of water, and can remain liquid over a wide temperature range. Two insulated steel tanks, one cold and one hot, allow operators to circulate the salt through solar receivers or electric heaters to charge, and then through heat exchangers to generate steam when discharge is required.”
An interesting read. Many ideas are really great in their time, but then also get superseded by better technology. Other technologies are pretty inefficient in the original times, and then dramatically improve, such as solar panels and batteries.
But for whatever is being looked at, one does always want to consider its full life cycle, as well as efficiency. Too often fanatical supports, or detractors, of a technology just cherry-pick aspects of it to highlight to make their case.
But for molten salt, its inefficiency is what really counts against it when there are better and more efficient solutions. Hydrogen I recall had its great efficiency touted by its supporters, but it lost out dramatically on the costs around storage and transport.
See
Why Molten Salt Won’t Be the Future of Industrial Heat Storage - CleanTechnica
Molten salt proved thermal storage at scale, yet faces limits in efficiency, cost, and risk. Simpler industrial heat solutions are overtaking it.
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