Investigation of the Thermocline Degradation in a Molten Salt Storage Tank

Kurzfassung

Molten salt storage tanks are utilized in solar thermal power plants [1]. At a pilot scale stage are single tank storage systems, where both hot and cold molten salt is stored due to density differences. In terms of storage efficiency, it is desirable to maintain a sharp thermal gradient. However, such gradients cause thermomechani-cal stresses which can even lead to tank failure (see Fig. 1). A better understanding of the thermocline behavior and its relation to the wall temperature would therefore be beneficial for storage performance evaluation and the cal-culation of the tank wall stresses. The aim of the present work is the measurement and analysis of the temperature profile in the near wall region of a single tank molten salt storage system.