Salting the highway. Molten salts can help produce hydrogen that would power cars such as this Mercedes Benz prototype.
So the world has an energy hangover from its centuries long binge on fossil fuels. Here’s the coming cure: molten salts.
These intriguing elixirs and their handy thermodynamic properties will soon stream and bathe their way into any number of power and industrial applications that will help the planet kick its addiction to hydrocarbons.
Want to produce hydrogen? Store solar energy? Remove CO2 from fossil fuels? Build a much safer and more effective nuclear reactor? Slash the carbon footprint of oil sand production?
Then try a molten salt.
HOT STUFF
As the name implies, these substances are salts that melt at a high temperature – hundreds of degrees C, depending on the particular salt. They’re stable, they’re good at absorbing heat, they don’t boil easily (convenient when you need a very hot liquid) and they flow like water.
Many of you will already know that molten salts could hold the key to turning solar electricity into a round-the-clock affair, rather than the intermittent “only when the sun shines” state that characterizes it today. A handful of “solar thermal” power plants – Gemasolar in Spain and Crescent Dunes in Nevada, for example – are or soon will start to warm up molten salts with special reflective mirrors in order to store heat that by night they can convert to steam and drive a generator.
Regular readers of my blog will also know that alternative nuclear reactors that use molten salt fuel and coolants at high temperatures could trump today’s conventional reactors in many ways. They’d be safer, meltdown proof, would operate more efficiently, leave much less long-lived waste, and their waste would be less suitable for fashioning bombs. Use thorium instead of uranium in those reactors, as China is planning, and those advantages hold even truer.
Here’s another potential use, as I wrote recently on my blog for the Weinberg Foundation, a London-based non-profit group that advocates alternative forms of nuclear energy:
Molten salts can help extract hydrogen while at the same time removing CO2 from hydrocarbons like oil sands, according to Western Hydrogen Ltd., a Calgary-based company.
Deploying molten salt technology developed at the U.S. Department of Energy’s Idaho National Laboratory, Western Hydrogen thinks it can pull hydrogen out of “carbonaceous” materials such as the bitumen in the oil sands common in Canada, as well as from other petroleum residue and petroleum coke.
Their so-called molten salt catalyzed gasification process runs water and carbon compounds through a bed of high temperature (around 850 degrees C) molten salts, out of which comes hydrogen and “sequestration ready” carbon dioxide, Western Hydrogen’s website explains in a “low carbon” energy scenario.
The hydrogen could be used as transportation fuel in the elusive hydrogen economy, and it could also feed petrochemical production processes which today use hydrogen derived from more expensive and less environmentally friendly processes, Western Hydrogen claims.
Western Hydrogen also plans to use its process to yield carbon monoxide and deuterium (an isotope of hydrogen that, incidentally, is key to nuclear fusion plans) that it would combine into synthetic liquid fuels.
CANADIAN KICK-OFF
The company hopes to start operating a pilot plant during the first half of this year near Fort Saskatchewan, Alberta in partnership with Aux Sable, a Canadian company that processes “offgases” from oil sands and would thus provide Western Hydrogen with a feedstock of presumably bitumen. The plant is being fabricated by Burlington, Ontario-based Zeton.
The Latest Bing News on:
Molten salts
- Sodium aluminum battery for renewables storage
on February 8, 2023 at 2:15 amUS researchers have designed a molten salt that could potentially reach an energy density of up to 100 Wh/kg at a cost of $7.02/ kWh. The battery uses an aluminum cathode that charges quickly and ...
- New sodium, aluminum battery aims to integrate renewables for grid resiliency
on February 7, 2023 at 7:20 amA new battery design could help ease integration of renewable energy into the nation's electrical grid at lower cost, using Earth-abundant metals, according to a study just published in Energy Storage ...
- Is America Ready for a New Age of Nuclear Power?
on February 7, 2023 at 3:00 amPhotographs by Brian Finke“WE WERE A BIT CRAZY”Kairos Power’s new test facility is on a parched site a few miles south of the Albuquerque, New Mexico, airport. Around it, desert stretches toward hazy ...
- Molten Salt Reactor Market 2023-2025 [New Report] | Players Need to Create Successful Strategies to Counter the Key Players
on February 3, 2023 at 12:36 amThe Molten Salt Reactor Market (2023-2025) Research Updated Report | Market includes the most useful information such ...
- Building A Battery From Molten Salt
on February 2, 2023 at 4:00 pmDuring World War II a scientist named Georg Otto Erb developed the molten salt battery for use in military applications. The war ended before Erb’s batteries found any real use, but British ...
- Argonne to work with nuclear companies in 3 projects funded by the Department of Energy
on February 1, 2023 at 3:59 pmArgonne National Laboratory will be partnering with three companies as part of a voucher program provided by the Gateway for Accelerated Innovation in Nuclear program of the U.S. Department of ...
- Molten Salt-Assisted Construction of Hollow Carbon Spheres with Outer-Order and Inner-Disorder Heterostructure for Ultra-Stable Potassium Ion Storage
on January 13, 2023 at 10:42 amArticle Views are the COUNTER-compliant sum of full text article downloads since November 2008 (both PDF and HTML) across all institutions and individuals. These metrics are regularly updated to ...
- Copenhagen Atomics submits molten salt SMR design
on January 9, 2023 at 2:36 amDenmark's Copenhagen Atomics has applied for its containerised small modular thorium molten salt reactor design to undergo Generic Design Assessment (GDA) in the UK. UK Atomics, a subsidiary of the ...
- Molten Salt Reactor Market Research Report 2023-2029
on January 8, 2023 at 4:00 pmJan 09, 2023 (The Expresswire) -- The "Molten Salt Reactor Market" provides a value chain analysis of revenue for the anticipated period from 2023 to 2029. The report will include a full and ...
The Latest Google Headlines on:
Molten salts
[google_news title=”” keyword=”Molten salts” num_posts=”10″ blurb_length=”0″ show_thumb=”left”]
[/vc_column_text]
The Latest Bing News on:
Molten salt technology
- Thermal Energy Storage Market to Grow at a CAGR of 16.3% during the Forecast Period 2021-2031: TMR Study
on February 8, 2023 at 7:30 amIncrease in demand for sophisticated energy technologies owing to depletion of energy resources and continuous rise in electricity consumption is likely to drive market developmentWilmington, Delaware ...
- Battery design from PNNL could help integrate renewables into the grid
on February 7, 2023 at 8:20 pmA research team led by the Department of Energy’s Pacific Northwest National Laboratory (PNNL) demonstrated what they said is a new design for a grid energy storage battery built with low-cost metals ...
- The Real Obstacle to Nuclear Power
on February 7, 2023 at 2:43 pmThere, digital readouts count down the minutes, T-minus style, until power begins flowing to a test unit simulating the blistering heat of a new kind of nuclear reactor. In this test run, electricity, ...
- New sodium, aluminum battery aims to integrate renewables for grid resiliency
on February 7, 2023 at 7:20 amA new battery design could help ease integration of renewable energy into the nation's electrical grid at lower cost, using Earth-abundant metals, according to a study just published in Energy Storage ...
- Molten Salt Reactor Market 2023-2025 [New Report] | Players Need to Create Successful Strategies to Counter the Key Players
on February 3, 2023 at 12:36 amThe Molten Salt Reactor Market (2023-2025) Research Updated Report | Market includes the most useful information such ...
- Building A Battery From Molten Salt
on February 2, 2023 at 4:00 pmDuring World War II a scientist named Georg Otto Erb developed the molten salt battery for use in military applications. The war ended before Erb’s batteries found any real use, but British ...
- Argonne to work with nuclear companies in 3 projects funded by the Department of Energy
on February 1, 2023 at 3:59 pmArgonne National Laboratory will be partnering with three companies as part of a voucher program provided by the Gateway for Accelerated Innovation in Nuclear program of the U.S. Department of ...
- Molten Salt Reactor Market Size, Sales, CAGR And Competition Data from 2023 To 2029 with Top Countries Data
on January 18, 2023 at 4:00 pmThe MarketWatch News Department was not involved in the creation of this content. Jan 19, 2023 (The Expresswire) -- Final Report will add the analysis of the impact of Russia-Ukraine War and COVID ...
- BV, ThorCon Developing Molten Salt Nuclear Power Barge
on January 12, 2023 at 3:59 pmThe technology will then deliver energy to the ... New technologies, such as molten salt reactors, open opportunities for the deployment of nuclear energy, power generation in the marine ...
The Latest Google Headlines on:
Molten salt technology
[google_news title=”” keyword=”molten salt technology” num_posts=”10″ blurb_length=”0″ show_thumb=”left”]
