Use of Silica Coated Zinc Nanoparticles for Enhancement in Thermal Properties of Carbonate Eutectic Salt for Concentrated Solar Power Plants

Concentrated Solar Power (CSP) is one of the most efficient mega-scale renewable Energy sources. However, the overall cost of energy production is not viable for commercial usage and supplanting with fossil fuels or energy produced by nuclear ways. Its operational cost mainly lies in the electrical and thermal systems of the plant. The thermal system comprises of heat storage and heat transfer system. Any enhancement to heat storage or transfer system will directly reduce the cost of operation and increase the yield. Conventionally, oils stable up to 400C were used to transfer and store heat, however more recently, molten salts have been operational in the field for purpose of heat transfer but still, their thermal storage and conduction are limited. The current work explores the possibility of boosting the thermal storage capacity of molten salts through the latent heat of added phase change materials and increasing the specific heat at the same time by adding silica encapsulated zinc nanoparticles. We studied the advantage of adding coated Zn nano-sized particles to carbonate eutectic mixture for enhanced thermal energy storage and heat capacity enhancement. Zinc particles (40nm–60nm) obtained from the commercial sources were coated with silica shells using the solgel process under alkaline conditions. The nano-capsules were then dispersed in a mixture of carbonate salts. A differential scanning calorimeter was employed to characterize the thermal properties of the mixture. Tranmission electron miocroscopy was employed to characterize nanoparticles and electron diffraction Spectroscopy was performed to characterize materials and strcutures involved.