Solar salt doped by MWCNTs as a promising high thermal conductivity material for CSP

Solar salt has great advantages in solar thermal power generation compared to other molten salts, but its thermal conductivity needs to be further improved. Multi-walled carbon nanotubes (MWCNTs) have excellent thermal properties that can improve the thermal conductivity of materials as additives. In this study, five kinds of solar salt/MWCNTs composites with different doping amounts were prepared by a high-temperature melting method. The results showed that doping with MWCNTs can indeed improve the thermal properties of solar salt. We studied their quantitative structure-activity relationship (QSAR) in order to explain these phenomena. According to the TG-DSC analysis, there was almost no change in the melting point and decomposition temperature; the XRD analysis revealed that the bulk of the material was still NaNO₃ and KNO₃, which did not change; and according to Archimedes' method, the density of the materials also changes little. The thermal conductivity of the material was measured by the laser flash method; the results showed that the thermal conductivity of the sample with 0.3% doping increased by 293%, reaching 1.65 W (m K)^-1. XPS analysis showed that the MWCNTs were purified and the impurity groups were largely removed after high-temperature melting. From the laser Raman analysis, the V₃ frequency peak of the sample with 0.3% doping was red-shifted, and for the other samples was blue-shifted. The SEM images showed that the sample with 0.3% doping was the most uniformly dispersed. When the doping amounts are appropriate, the improvement in thermal conductivity may be attributed to two reasons: (1) the MWCNTs can be uniformly dispersed, as the SEM shows; (2) tiny thermally conductive channels may be formed on the interface between the molten salt and the MWCNTs, thereby generating a boundary effect. This kind of composite material may help improve solar heat storage and heat transfer capacity, and thereby increase the efficiency of solar thermal power generation.