A chemist at the University of Cincinnati has found a way to study the properties of molten salts, which are used in many nuclear and solar energy applications.
Yu Shi is a research associate at the UC College of Arts and Sciences.
When molten salt is heated it becomes liquid. Researchers studied table salt. The cooling systems in nuclear power plants use molten salt. They can be used to store energy.
molten salt is an electrical conductor.
Shi said that molten salts can hold a lot of energy in a liquid state. They have good thermodynamics. They're a good material for energy storage. They can be used as a cooling agent.
The study was published in the Royal Society of Chemistry journal Chemical Science.
The study provides a reliable approach to study the conversion of dissolved gas to vapor in molten salts, which helps engineers understand the effect of different impurities and solutes oncorrosion. It will help researchers study the release of potentially toxic gas into the atmosphere, which will be very useful for fourth- generation molten salt nuclear reactor.
Shi said that they used their deep neural network and quasi-chemical theory to model the solvation of molten salt.
The study co-author is Thomas Beck, a former head of the Department of Chemistry at the University of California. Beck said molten salts don't expand when they're heated.
Nuclear reactor pressure goes up a lot. It leads to more risks and higher costs when it comes to reactor design.
Researchers used the Advanced Research Computing Center and the Ohio Supercomputer Center.
Beck said that their experiment would take less time at Oak Ridge because of the world's fastest computer. It can take weeks or months to run a quantum simulation on a typical supercomputer.
Stephen Lam is a researcher at the University of Massachusetts-Lowell.
Accurate models of these salts are important. Beck said that they were the first group to calculate the free energy of salt at high temperature in liquid. We proved that it is a useful technique.
In 2020, Shi and Beck established a free-energy scale for single-ion hydration using quasi-chemical theory and quantum mechanical simulations. The first solvation free-energy calculation was done using quantum mechanics.
Beck thinks molten salts will be important for fusion energy.
molten salts could be used as a coating for the high- temperature reactor. fusion is a long way down the road.
More information: Yu Shi et al, Deep neural network based quantum simulations and quasichemical theory for accurate modeling of molten salt thermodynamics, Chemical Science (2022). DOI: 10.1039/D2SC02227C
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