Predicting thermophysical properties of molten salts in the MgCl 2-NaCl- KCl-LiCl system with a shell-model potential

C Jiang and JC Guo and D Andersson and D Schwen and C Benmore and N Hoyt and B Spencer, JOURNAL OF MOLECULAR LIQUIDS, 403, 124854 (2024).

DOI: 10.1016/j.molliq.2024.124854

Ternary eutectic salts composed of MgCl 2 , NaCl, and KCl, referred to as MNK salts, have recently emerged as promising candidates as high -temperature heat transfer fluids and thermal energy storage media. In this study, we performed classical molecular dynamics (MD) simulations to predict the densities, specific heat capacities, viscosities, and ionic self-diffusivities for MNK salts over a wide temperature range. The impact of LiCl additive on their thermophysical properties was also investigated. To capture the electronic polarization of Cl anions by neighboring cations, we developed a novel shell -model potential using the force -matching method and a dataset of ab initio calculated interatomic forces. Our extensive MD simulations predict structure and properties for pure salts and binary/ternary salt mixtures in the MgCl 2 -NaCl-KCl-LiCl system in overall good agreement with available experimental and theoretical data, which corroborates the accuracy and reliability of our developed potential.

Return to Publications page