An evaluation of pressure and flow measurement in the Molten Salt Test Loop (MSTL) system
Gill, David D.; Kolb, William J.
The National Solar Thermal Test Facility at Sandia National Laboratories has a unique test capability called the Molten Salt Test Loop (MSTL) system. MSTL allows customers and researchers to test components in flowing, molten nitrate salt at plant-like conditions for pressure, flow, and temperature. An important need in thermal storage systems that utilize molten salts is for accurate flow and pressure measurement at temperatures above 535ÀC. Currently available flow and pressure instrumentation for molten salt is limited to 535ÀC and even at this temperature the pressure measurement appears to have significant variability. It is the design practice in current Concentrating Solar Power plants to measure flow and pressure on the cold side of the process or in dead-legs where the salt can cool, but this practice wont be possible for high temperature salt systems. For this effort, a set of tests was conducted to evaluate the use of the pressure sensors for flow measurement across a device of known flow coefficient Cv. To perform this task, the pressure sensors performance was evaluated and was found to be lacking. The pressure indicators are severely affected by ambient conditions and were indicating pressure changes of nearly 200psi when there was no flow or pressure in the system. Several iterations of performance improvement were undertaken and the pressure changes were reduced to less than 15psi. The results of these pressure improvements were then tested for use as flow measurement. It was found that even with improved pressure sensors, this is not a reliable method of flow measurement. The need for improved flow and pressure measurement at high temperatures remains and will need to be solved before it will be possible to move to high temperature thermal storage systems with molten salts.