Corrosion Assessment of Myo-Inositol Sugar Alcohol as a Phase Change Material in Storage Systems Connected to Fresnel Solar Plants

Abstract

Thermal energy storage systems work in conjunction with solar technologies with the aim of increasing their dispatchability and competitiveness in the energy market. Among others, latent heat thermal energy storage systems have become an appealing research subject and many efforts have therefore been invested in selecting the best phase change material (PCM) to fit the final application. In this study, an extended corrosion characterization was performed for two PCM candidates, solar salt (40 wt.% KNO3/60 wt.% NaNO3) and myo-inositol (C6H12O6), to be applied in Fresnel solar plants. Corrosion rates were determined in aluminium, stainless steel (AISI 304), carbon steel (AISI 1090), and copper by gravimetric tests, gauging the weight loss after 2000 h of immersion at 250 ºC. The corrosion products were characterized by scanning electron microscopy (SEM) and x-ray diffraction (XRD). The corrosion tests carried out with myo-inositol did not show accurate enough results to draw conclusions regarding corrosion on the metals. However, it was observed that this sugar alcohol strongly sticks to the metal specimens, making myo-inositol extremely difficult to manage as an energy storage material. Therefore, the present paper discourages the use of myo-inositol as a PCM beyond its corrosion rate.

Funding: The research received funding from Spanish government (MINECO/FEDER), grant number ENE2015-64117-C5-1-R. This work was partially funded by the European Union´s Horizon 2020 Research & Innovation Programme under Grant Agreement 723596 with reference name Innova MicroSolar. José Miguel Maldonado received funding from the Spanish Government for his research fellowship, grant number BES-2016-076554. Ángel G. Fernández has received funding from the European Union's Horizon 2020 research and innovation programme under the Marie Sklodowska-Curie grant agreement No 712949 (TECNIOspring PLUS) and from the Agency for Business Competitiveness of the Government of Catalonia. This work is partially supported by ICREA under the ICREA Academia programme. Acknowledgments: The authors would like to thank the Catalan Government for the quality accreditation given to their research group GREiA (2017 SGR 1537). GREiA is a certified agent TECNIO in the category of technology developers from the Government of Catalonia.