Abstract

TES has taken more importance in the last decades because of the increasing demand of clean energies, to avoid pollution and global warming. Towards this aim, many materials for energy storage have been developed, but many of them are still much expensive and produce lesser energy than conventional fuels. In this research the potential use of waste-process salt, coming from the non-metallic mining industry in northern Chile, as heat storage material was studied. The cost of this salt is low, and it corresponds to the transport cost to the application place mainly. The stability and thermophysical properties of hydrated double salt, carnallite (KClMgCl2 6H2O), were determined by TG and DSC techniques. That information was useful to establish the range of application for this waste-salt. The results proved that a product with fewer molecules of water of this salt is suitable for using as a material for sensible energy storage at high temperature within the range from 250°C to 400°C.