Investigation on heat and mass transfer performance of novel composite strontium chloride for sorption reactors

A novel composite strontium chloride (SrCl2) is developed with porous material of expanded natural graphite (ENG) and nanoparticle of carbon coated aluminum (Al@C) as the additives. Samples with different densities and mass ratios of salt are produced and classified into disk and plate types which are parallel and perpendicular to the compression direction, respectively. Thermal conductivity is investigated by laser flash measuring method whereas permeability is tested through Ergun model. It is indicated that with regard to thermal conductivity and permeability, plate samples show the better performance than that of disk samples. The highest thermal diffusivity could reach 5.7 mm2·s−1 when the density is 800 kg·m−3. Correspondingly the highest thermal conductivity is 2.96 W·m−1·K−1, which is about 15 times higher than that of ordinary granular SrCl2. Permeability of plate and disk samples range from 9.9 × 10−10 m2 to 9.89 × 10−14 m2 and 2.91 × 10−10 m2 to 2.46 × 10−14 m2 when the density ranges between 400 kg·m−3 and 600 kg·m−3. The possible applications are presented and compared by using heat and mass properties of novel composite SrCl2, which show their respective advantages when simulating the performance for the different reactors.