BES

Materials and components for molten salt storage systems

Molten salts are becoming not only a standard thermal storage medium, but also a working fluid for central receiver solar plants. However, there are still open questions regarding the durability of components and materials currently available at the market for molten salt circuits. Keeping this in mind, a specific activity line was implemented in the laboratory of Concentrating Solar System Unit for this purpose. The equipment associated to this activity is installed indoor at PSA and it is composed of two test benches, BES-I and BES-II (Figure 14) especially designed and manufactured for testing of valves, pressure transmitters and other molten salts components under real working conditions up to 600ºC and 40 bar. Components with a nominal diameters from 2” up to 6” can be evaluated in these test benches.