A characteristic study on the start-up performance of molten-salt heat pipes: Experimental investigation

This paper reports a fundamental experimental investigation of the start-up characteristics of heat pipes using a dedicated molten-salt mixture as the working fluid. Based on four single salt, i.e. NaNO3(AR), KNO3(AR), LiNO3(AR) and Ca(NO3)2(AR), a quaternary molten-salt working fluid was developed and charged at different masses into four heat pipes with the same dimensions of 980 mm in length and 22 mm in diameter. A parallel comparison on the start-up performance of these heat pipes was then conducted to observe the influence of the charging mass and the inclination angle under the consistent lab-controlled conditions. The experimental results showed the heat pipe with molten-salt charge of 40 g responded much quicker than those with molten salt charge of 60 g, 70 g and 80 g respectively; meanwhile, the molten-salt heat pipe achieved the maximum condensation temperature at inclination angle of 50°. Comparing to the conventional naphthalene heat pipe, the dedicated molten-salt heat pipe had a much shorter start-up time when they were charged with the same amount of 40 g. The overall research result is expected to provide certain guidance for further design and operation of molten-salt heat pipe in high-and-medium-temperature heat transfer and storage scenarios.