Fundamental understanding of thermophysical properties of molten salts containing nanoparticles

Molten salts have been widely used as thermal energy storage (TES) materials as they offer favourable specifications which enable them to be employed in TES applications. Finding a cost-effective method to enhance the energy storage capability of molten salts has caught the attention of many researchers. It was reported that by adding a small amount of nanoparticles, a major enhancement of the specific heat capacity was observed in molten salts. Though different studies argued that the enhancement was not found in other thermal storage materials, the observation of the enhancement was continuously reported. This work studied the thermal properties of molten salt based nanosuspensions synthesized with a novel method modified based on other studies. Molecular dynamics (MD) simulations were employed to study the thermodynamic properties of the nanosuspension systems. By the analysis of the effect on the internal energy of the nanosuspensions I draft general conclusions and explain why molten salt have this specific heat enhancement while other materials (e.g. water) does not. I use MD simulation to support, for the first time, a theory that can explain the apparently contradictory behaviour of the experimental data. Moreover, the main impact factor affecting the enhancement was investigated and discussed.