Investigating the Thermophysical Properties of Industrial Waste Produced in the UAE for High-Temperature Thermal Energy Storage Applications

Abstract

Massive endeavors are devoted in the field of concentrated solar power (CSP) to achieve higher efficiency in solar-to-electricity production while reducing the overall cost of power plants. This is accomplished by optimizing current CSP technologies to reach higher operating temperatures and incorporating thermal energy storage (TES) system to fill the mismatch between energy demand and supply, and produce a constant power fed to the grid. When the latter aspect is considered, efficiency of CSP plant is substantially relying on the type and concept of thermal storage used. The widely utilized storage materials in commercial CSP plants are binary nitrate molten salts mixtures. Despite of their suitable properties, molten salts have limitations of relatively high freezing point (220 ºC) and relatively low maximum operating temperatures (600 ºC). This thesis focuses particularly on proposing new materials for high-temperature sensible heat based TES applications. These storage materials should meet certain characteristics to be competitive with the existing nitrate molten salts. A novel approach has been proposed for this purpose by recycling waste or by-products from the UAE industry. First, four waste materials have been identified from steel and aluminum industries: namely, aluminum white dross, aluminum pot skimming, electric arc furnace slags and ladle furnace slags. Second, various chemical and thermophysical characterizations have been conducted to investigate the potential of implementing these new materials in TES systems. This innovative approach could potentially solve two major problems at the same time: *proposing new low-cost high temperature materials produced locally, and *opening new highly valuable markets for sustainable waste management.

Date of Award	May 2015
Original language	American English
Supervisor	Nicolas Calvet (Supervisor)