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
- Copenhagen Atomics: a thorium molten salt reactor start-up in an unlikely location
on May 7, 2024 at 6:09 amIt has a business model that allows it to obtain learning curves, while generating cash flow by selling what it learns from the process to various clients.
- The next big breakthrough in power generation could happen beneath our feet — how nuclear technology can be made safer
on May 5, 2024 at 2:01 amMSRs could be a huge win for the environment and human health. Nuclear power is already a low-carbon energy source. But MSRs take that a step further by generating less long-lived nuclear waste. Some ...
- Facility to advance new-era nuclear research
on May 3, 2024 at 1:32 amThe £3m facility was funded by the Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council (EPSRC) as part of the National Nuclear User Facility (NNUF) project to provide state-of-the-art experimental ...
- Student wins $169,000 DOE fellowship to pursue a doctoral degree in nuclear materials
on May 1, 2024 at 5:00 pmGraduate student Thomas Selmi spends his time in the lab working on molten salt —designed to be used in nuclear reactors — and the U.S. Department of Energy wants to keep it that way. Selmi has ...
- World’s first molten salt energy storage facility launched in Denmark
on April 26, 2024 at 4:37 amDanish company Hyme Energy has launched the world’s first energy storage project using molten hydroxide salt to store green energy. The project is called Molten Salt Storage – MOSS, and the energy ...
- Molten Salt Reactor Technology Solves Several Nuclear Industry Problems
on April 8, 2024 at 10:36 pmThe U.S. Senate on April 30 passed—by unanimous consent—a bill to ban imports of unirradiated low-enriched uranium (LEU) produced in Russia. The bill now heads to the president’s desk for ...
- Molten Salt Reactor Technology Solves Several Nuclear Industry Problems
on April 8, 2024 at 5:00 pmMolten salt reactors (MSRs) represent a fascinating intersection of nuclear history and modern innovation. The concept of using molten salts as both a coolant and fuel carrier dates back to the 1950s, ...
- Molten Salt Reactor Technology Solves Several Nuclear Industry Problems
on April 8, 2024 at 5:00 pmMolten salt reactors (MSRs) represent a fascinating intersection of nuclear history and modern innovation. The concept of using molten salts as both a coolant and fuel carrier dates back to the ...
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
- Copenhagen Atomics: a thorium molten salt reactor start-up in an unlikely location
on May 7, 2024 at 6:09 amIt has a business model that allows it to obtain learning curves, while generating cash flow by selling what it learns from the process to various clients.
- The next big breakthrough in power generation could happen beneath our feet — how nuclear technology can be made safer
on May 5, 2024 at 2:01 amMSRs could be a huge win for the environment and human health. Nuclear power is already a low-carbon energy source. But MSRs take that a step further by generating less long-lived nuclear waste. Some ...
- Student wins $169,000 DOE fellowship to pursue a doctoral degree in nuclear materials
on May 1, 2024 at 5:00 pmMolten salt reactor (MSR) designs are the next generation (Generation ... While the DOE built a prototype MSR in the 1960s and led in this technology, Chidambaram noted that the country has lost a lot ...
- What is a 'sand battery'? And what does it mean?
on April 28, 2024 at 9:05 pmPermanent and modular lithium-ion battery systems are the most common way of storing surplus renewable energy. In fact, used electric vehicle batteries are increasingly finding a second service life ...
- Schneider partners with nuclear company Terrestrial Energy to commercialize small reactors
on April 26, 2024 at 9:20 amNuclear small modular reactor (SMR) company Terrestrial Energy is teaming up with Schneider Electric. Canada-based Terrestrial is developing a 190MWe Integral Molten Salt Reactor (ISMR). The companies ...
- World’s first molten salt energy storage facility launched in Denmark
on April 26, 2024 at 4:37 amDanish company Hyme Energy has launched the world’s first energy storage project using molten hydroxide salt to store green energy. The project is called Molten Salt Storage – MOSS, and the energy ...
- MIT Technology Review
on April 14, 2024 at 5:00 pmMalta, which spun out from X (formerly Google X) in 2018, is building technology that will take in electricity, store the energy as heat in a molten-salt system, and then re-generate electricity ...
- Molten Salt Reactor Technology Solves Several Nuclear Industry Problems
on April 8, 2024 at 10:36 pmThe U.S. Senate on April 30 passed—by unanimous consent—a bill to ban imports of unirradiated low-enriched uranium (LEU) produced in Russia. The bill now heads to the president’s desk for ...
- Molten Salt Reactor Technology Solves Several Nuclear Industry Problems
on April 8, 2024 at 5:00 pmIn 1965, ORNL successfully operated the Molten Salt Reactor Experiment (MSRE), a proof-of-concept reactor that demonstrated the technology’s feasibility and inherent safety features. The MSRE achieved ...
- Molten Salt Reactor Technology Solves Several Nuclear Industry Problems
on April 8, 2024 at 5:00 pmIn 1965, ORNL successfully operated the Molten Salt Reactor Experiment (MSRE), a proof-of-concept reactor that demonstrated the technology’s feasibility and inherent safety features. The MSRE ...
The Latest Google Headlines on:
Molten salt technology
[google_news title=”” keyword=”molten salt technology” num_posts=”10″ blurb_length=”0″ show_thumb=”left”]
