Advances in molten salt storage systems using other liquid sensible storage media for heat storage

Abstract This chapter describes the principles of heat storage systems, with emphasis on those currently used sensible storage media an industrial scale: direct storage in power tower, two tanks indirect storage, and thermocline systems. This chapter provides information on both organic and inorganic commercial heat storage liquid media, such as oils and molten salts (nitrates/nitrites), and discusses the advantages and disadvantages of using these storage media. The trends of improvements in thermophysical properties of existing molten salts such as heat capacity, thermal stability, and thermal conductivity, are described. Also, the update research into developing low melting–point molten salt mixtures, new advanced carbonate and chloride-based mixtures, and other promising heat storage/transfer liquid media, such as metals, alloys, and ionic liquids are presented.