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Mechanism exploration of the enhancement of

thermal energy storage in molten salt nanofluid†
Cite this: Phys. Chem. Chem. Phys.,
2021, 23, 13181
Zhao Li,a Liu Cui, *a Baorang Lia and Xiaoze Du*b

Enhancement of the specific heat capacity of a molten salt-based nanofluid is investigated via molecular
dynamics (MD) simulations. The results show that the addition of nanoparticles indeed enhances the
Published on 19 May 2021. Downloaded on 8/12/2021 4:54:16 PM.

Received 11th January 2021,
Accepted 6th May 2021
DOI: 10.1039/d1cp00125f
rsc.li/pccp
specific heat capacity of the base fluid. Combining the analysis of potential energy and system
configurations, the main reasons responsible for the enhancement of the specific heat capacity of the
nanofluid are revealed. Different from previous reports on nanofluids, there is no correlation between
the specific heat capacity and the potential energy magnitude of the nanofluid system. It is noticed that
the trend of change in the potential energy with nanoparticle loading is only related to the relative
magnitude of the nanoparticle and the base fluid potential energy. Moreover, the introduction of
nanoparticles introduces an extra force into the system and causes the formation of a compressed layer
around the nanoparticle. This structure is tighter than the pure base fluid and requires more energy to
be broken. The extra energy used to break this structure can act to enhance the specific heat capacity
of the nanofluid. Our research reveals the mechanism behind the specific heat capacity enhancement
and guides the prediction of thermal properties and material selection of the nanofluid.

1. Introduction In 1995, Choi et al. presented the concept of a nanofluid.11

As is known, fossil fuels will be exhausted in the future.
Meanwhile, burning fossil fuels also leads to the emission of
pollutants and environmental challenges. We must develop
sources of sustainable and environmentally friendly energy.
The thermoelectric conversion part of the solar thermal power
system is similar to that of the thermal power generation
system. It matches well with power grids, and the technology
is relatively mature. Hence, concentrated solar power (CSP) is
suitable for large-scale centralized power stations and is the
most promising power-generation method in renewable-energy
power generation.1 Generally, molten salts play the role of heat-
storage material and heat-transfer medium in the CSP system
since they have lots of advantages.2–6 However, the heat-storage
properties of molten salts are not satisfactory. The specific heat
capacity (SHC) of a molten salt, such as molten nitrate or carbo-
nate, in the liquid phase is usually less than 2 J g1 K1.7–9 The
equipment scale and total cost will increase greatly for heat-storage
materials with a relatively lower specific heat capacity.10
a
Key Laboratory of Power Station Energy Transfer Conversion and System
(North China Electric Power University), Ministry of Education, Beijing 102206,
China. E-mail: liucui@ncepu.edu.cn
b
School of Energy and Power Engineering, Lanzhou University of Technology,
Lanzhou 730050, China. E-mail: duxz@ncepu.edu.cn
† Electronic supplementary information (ESI) available. See DOI: 10.1039/
d1cp00125f
They added nanoparticles into different types of fluids, and an
enhancement in the thermal properties was obtained. After that,
some researchers applied the concept of nanofluids to enhancing
the thermal properties of molten salts. Based on closely related
research work, the addition of nanoparticles can indeed enhance
the SHC of molten salts. For example, Li et al.12 investigated the
SiO2 nanoparticle concentration and size effects on a binary
nitrate (53 wt% KNO3 + 47 wt% Ca(NO3)24H2O). Their results
showed that the optimal concentration and size are 1 wt% and
20 nm, respectively, and 17.8% SHC enhancement can be
obtained. Nithiyanantham et al.13 also investigated a binary
nitrate (51 wt% NaNO3 + 49 wt% KNO3) based nanofluid. They
paid attention to the effect of the nano additive shape on the SHC.
The SHC enhancement was about 6 and 3% for the molten salt
with nanorods and nanoparticles, respectively. This difference
may result from the nanoparticles with different shapes having
different specific surface areas. In addition, El Far et al.14 studied
a binary carbonate (Li2CO3–K2CO3) based nanofluid with 1 wt%
concentration of SiO2 nanoparticles. The SiO2 nanoparticles pro-
vided a 19% enhancement of the SHC. Sang et al.15 considered
different nanoparticle materials, and they selected SiO2, Al2O3,
CuO, and TiO2 as the nano-additives. The results showed that
78.0–116.8%, 50.6–66.5%, 50.6–73.9%, and 31.1–56.5% enhance-
ment can be obtained for SiO2, Al2O3, CuO, and TiO2 nanofluids,
respectively.
Although these studies can help us to understand the
thermal properties of molten salt-based nanofluids, it is

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difficult to explain the reason for the anomalous change in SHC
via experimental research or theoretical derivation. The pro-
blem is that these measurements are limited by some factors
(such as high temperature, corrosion, or the vacuum needed in
scanning electron microscope and transmission electron
microscope measurements, etc.). Moreover, the theory about
the heat storage and the heat and mass transfer process in the
liquid phase has not been clarified yet.
Molecular dynamics (MD) simulations present a powerful
tool to investigate heat-storage mechanisms. As for molten salt-
based nanofluids, Qiao et al.16 and Hu et al.17 studied the SHC
using MD simulations and explained the enhancement in SHC
by analyzing different energy components. However, there is a
contrast between their results. Qiao et al. believed that the SHC
of a molten salt-based nanofluid has a negative correlation with
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the potential energy; however, the results of Hu et al. demon-
strated that the increment of potential energy leads to an
increment in the SHC. So far, the physical insight of enhanced
SHC is not fully understood. The following questions need to be
answered. Why is there an apparent contradiction in the
conclusions in existing studies about the relationship between
the specific heat capacity and the system potential energy? Can
we come to a consistent conclusion about the mechanism of
SHC enhancement for molten-salt nanofluids with different
nanoparticles?
In this work, we employed MD simulations to study the SHC
of two kinds of molten salt-based nanofluids, i.e. an SiO2–
binary carbonate nanofluid and an Al2O3–binary carbonate
Fig. 1 Simulation domain of the molten salt-based nanocomposite system. (a) Al2O3 nanocomposite. (b) SiO2 nanocomposite.
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nanofluid. In Section 2, we give the details of the MD simula-
tions. In Section 3, we present the results on the SHC, including
the relationship between the SHC and the magnitude of the
potential energy, the interaction and the force between the
nanoparticle and the base fluid, and the compressed layer. In
Section 4, we draw some conclusions and discuss their
significance.
2. Model and methodology
The carbonates, i.e. Na2CO3, K2CO3, and Li2CO3, etc., have the
advantages of a high working temperature, excellent thermal
stability, and very weak corrosion, which can be used as good
thermal-energy-storage materials. Meanwhile, SiO2 and Al2O3
nanoparticles are also two commonly-used nanoscale additives
available in large reserves and at low cost. In this work, the
binary carbonate (Li2CO3 : K2CO3 = 62 : 38 in molar ratio) is
chosen as the base fluid. The SiO2 and Al2O3 nanoparticles are
the nano-additives. The model of the binary carbonate-based
nanocomposite is shown in Fig. 1. The modeling process and
the related parameters can be found in our previous research.18
This process is also used to model the Al2O3 nanocomposite,
and the parameters of the Al2O3 primitive cell are a = b = 4.758 Å
and c = 12.991 Å, which are lattice constants of the hexagonal
lattice. The diameters of the Al2O3 and SiO2 nanoparticles are
both set as 22 Å.
The Large-scale Atomic/Molecular Massively Parallel Simu-
lator (LAMMPS)19 was selected as the tool to complete this
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simulation work. The related potential function and para-
meters can be found in the ESI.† We calculated the specific
heat capacity C in terms of the total energy fluctuations based
on the fluctuation theory,20 shown in eqn (1),
sE2
C¼
kB T 2
where sE2 is the fluctuation of the system total energy at the
canonical ensemble (NVT), and sE2 = hE2i  hEi2 (where h i
represents the value average by atom in the system). There are
two reasons for choosing the specific heat at a constant volume
(Cv) rather than that at constant pressure (Cp) as the research
object of this work. First, the calculation of Cp involves the
calculation of the pressure (P), which requires a relatively large
system to obtain the statistical average values of the impact
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force on the container wall. On the other hand, Cv is basically
equal to Cp for incompressible fluids and condensed
matters.21–23 Cv was also used in a previous investigation.16
In our MD simulations, the time step was set as 0.5 fs and
the periodic boundary conditions were applied in the three-
dimensional simulation box. First, the nanocomposite system
was equilibrated at the NPT ensemble (the Nosé–Hoover ther-
mostat and barostat24,25 were employed to fix the system at the
given temperature, 800 K, and pressure, 1 atm) and then the
NVT ensemble for both as 1000 ps. After these equilibrations,
the temperature and total energy were all convergent and the
relative error on the total energy of the system DE/E was always
of the order of 105–104. After the equilibration process, the
data production runs were finally performed in the NVT
ensemble for another 1000 ps. Each value of specific heat
capacity was evaluated from six independent simulations.
3. Results and discussion
3.1 Specific heat capacity
To verify the validity of the models and selected potential
functions, the SHC of the pure base fluid, SiO2, and Al2O3
nanoparticles were first calculated. The obtained SHC of the
Fig. 2 Specific heat capacity of the pure carbonate and nanocomposites with different nanoparticle concentrations at a temperature of 800 K. (a) SiO2
nanocomposite. (b) Al2O3 nanocomposite.
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base fluid is 1.625 J (g K)1, which agrees well with the experi-
mental value of 1.620 J (g K)1.26 The SHC of the SiO2 nanopar-
ticle obtained by MD simulation is 1.260 J (g K)1, which is
consistent with the value 1.110 J (g K)1 mentioned in ref. 27.
However, there is no experiment or simulation research about
(1) the SHC of Al2O3 nanoparticles at the assigned size and tem-
perature. We judge the correctness based on the SHC of the
Al2O3 bulk material and the size effect theory. The SHC of the
nanoparticle is usually larger than that of the corresponding bulk
material, and it increases with the decrease in the particle size.28
The obtained SHC of the Al2O3 bulk material is 0.769 J (g K)1 at
room temperature and increases with the increment of tempera-
ture. The SHC of the Al2O3 nanoparticle is 1.161 J (g K)1 at 800 K,
which is higher than that of the bulk material. This helps to prove
that the calculated value of the Al2O3 nanoparticle is appropriate.
Therefore, the models and potential functions used in our MD
simulations are reasonable and applicative to the corresponding
materials.
In order to make the simulation system close to that used in
experimental investigations, meanwhile, and considering the com-
putation resources, the weight fraction of the SiO2 nanocomposite
was set as 1%, 1.5%, and 2%. Since the density of Al2O3 is much
larger than that of SiO2, the weight fraction of the Al2O3 nanocom-
posite was set as 2%, 3%, and 4%. The SHC values of the SiO2 and
Al2O3 nanocomposites obtained by MD simulation are shown in
Fig. 2(a and b), respectively. In order to verify the simulation model
and procedure, the specific heat capacity from the MD simulation
is compared with the experimentally measured value, as shown in
Fig. 2. Since there may be lots of aggregation in the nanocomposite
when the nanoparticle loading is higher, the nanoparticle loadings
are set as 1 and 1.5% for the SiO2 nanocomposite and 1% and 2%
for the Al2O3 nanocomposite. As can be seen, the percentage error
values in the MD calculations of the specific heat capacity with
respect to the experimental value are 4 and 3% with 1 and 2%
nanoparticle loadings, respectively, for the SiO2 nanoparticles, and
1.2% with 2% nanoparticle loadings for the Al2O3 nanocomposite,
respectively. Therefore, the MD simulation in this research should
be reasonable and accurate.
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Fig. 3 Energy analysis in the nanocomposite at 800 K. (a) SiO2 nanocomposite. (b) Al2O3 nanocomposite.

For comparison, the SHC values calculated from the thermal consists of the kinetic energy (Eke) and potential energy (Epe).
equilibrium model,29 or named mixing model, are also pro-
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vided. In the thermal equilibrium model, the SHC of the
mixture system can be calculated as
mp Cp þ mf Cf
Cmixture ¼
mmixture
where C and m represent the SHC and mass, and the subscripts
‘mixture’, ‘p’ and ‘f’ are the mixture system, particle, and base
fluid, respectively.
It can be seen from Fig. 2, for both SiO2 and Al2O3 nano-
composites, that the SHC is significantly higher than that of the
pure base fluid. Besides, the SHC is positively correlated with
the loading of the nanoparticle. In the SiO2 nanocomposite, the
SHC enhancement is from 10.25 to 17.56% with the nano-
particle loading from 1 to 2 wt%. For the Al2O3 nanocomposite,
the SHC enhancement is from 7.9 to 19.16% with the nano-
particle loading from 2 to 4 wt%. For the two nanocomposites,
the SHC values predicted by the thermal equilibrium model are
lower than those of the pure base fluid and have a negative
correlation with the nanoparticle loading. This result is differ-
ent from our MD studies. It may be because the thermal
equilibrium model only pays attention to the relative magni-
tude of the thermophysical properties of the nanoparticle and
base fluid, while the interactions between the nanoparticle and
the base fluid are neglected.
3.2 Relationship between the SHC and the magnitude of the
potential energy
The SHC is a thermophysical property that measures how much
energy can be stored in a certain amount of a substance at a
certain temperature. Hence, investigating the different compo-
nents of the system energy per atom and per interaction is an
effective way to explain the SHC enhancement. The total energy
Further, the Epe consists of the van der Waals energy (Evdwl),
Coulombic energy (Ecoul), and molecular energy (Emol) (i.e. the
total value of the bond energy (Ebond), angle energy (Eangle), and
improper energy (Eimpro)), as shown in eqn (3).
(2)
Etotal ¼ Eke þ Epe
¼ Eke þ Evdwl þ Ecoul þ Emol (3)
¼ Eke þ Evdwl þ Ecoul þ Ebond þ Eangle þ Eimpro
The energies mentioned above have been calculated for both
nanocomposites, as shown in Fig. 3. All the energy values are
averaged over six independent initial velocity conditions.
Fig. 3(a) shows that the Epe per atom of the SiO2 nanocomposite
decreases slightly with the increment of nanoparticle loading.
However, Fig. 3(b) demonstrates that the Epe per atom of the
Al2O3 nanocomposite has a positive correlation with the nano-
particle loading.
To explain the contrasting dependence of Epe on the nano-
particle loading, we further investigated the different compo-
nents of the energy of the two kinds of nanoparticle and base
fluid. The results are shown in Table 1. It can be seen that the
Epe per atom for the Al2O3 nanoparticle is 5.738  1018 J,
which is much higher than that of the binary carbonate,
5.725  1019 J. Apparently, the Epe of the Al2O3 nanocompo-
site becomes higher when there are more Al2O3 nanoparticles
in the nanocomposite system. On the contrary, there is an
opposite situation in the SiO2 nanocomposite system. The
variation trend of other energy components can also be pre-
dicted. Therefore, the difference in the energy components of
the nanoparticle and base fluid should have a major impact on
the changing trend of each component of the system energy
of the nanocomposite. The greater the energy difference

Table 1 Each energy component of the nanoparticle and the base fluid for the two nanocomposites

Engery (J)
Substance Etotal Eke Epe Ecoul Evdwl Ebond Eangle Eimpro
Al2O3 5.754  1018 1.655  1020 5.738  1018 4.338  1018 4.139  1021 1.201  1019 1.509  1019 2.311  1019
SiO2 2.115  1018 1.653  1020 2.132  1018 1.869  1018 2.626  1019 — — —
Base fluid 5.559  1019 1.657  1020 5.725  1019 6.704  1019 7.700  1020 5.772  1021 3.597  1020 0

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Table 2 Epe per atom of nanoparticle and base fluid system obtained from ref. 16 and 17
Object SiO2 nanoparticle NaNO3
18
Epe (J) 2.133  10 2.190  10
between the nanoparticle and the base fluid, the larger the
change of the nanocomposite system energy.
To focus on the contradiction in previous studies16,17 as
mentioned in Section 1, we used the same method to explore
the reason behind the contrast. First, the Epe values of the
nanoparticle and the base fluid investigated in the research of
Qiao’s and Hu’s groups are calculated, respectively (the corres-
ponding force field in their studies is used for calculation of the
Epe), as shown in Table 2. It can be seen that there is a relatively
greater disparity between the Epe per atom of the nanoparticle
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and the base fluid for these two nanocomposites in the
research of Qiao et al. and Hu et al.,16,17 which is similar to
the case in our simulation. Further, the magnitude of the
nanoparticle Epe dominates the trend in the Epe of the nano-
composite in their investigation (i.e. the lower nanoparticle Epe
would induce a reduction in the nanocomposite Epe and vice
versa). According to the aforesaid analysis, there is in fact no
contradiction between the studies of Qiao and Hu. It looks like
there is a contrast only because Qiao and Hu established the
correlation between the magnitude of the nanocomposite
potential energy and the nanocomposite SHC.
We believe that there may not be a correlation between the
magnitude of the nanocomposite potential energy and the
nanocomposite SHC. Meanwhile, the investigation in this sec-
tion cannot help us determine the interaction between the
nanoparticle and the base fluid, which is a quite important
factor in the nanocomposite system. It is necessary for us to
develop an approach to investigate it.
3.3 Interaction and force between the nanoparticle and the
base fluid
There is an interaction between the nanoparticle and the base
fluid, and this may have an influence on the system energy and
SHC. However, the relative magnitude of the energy compo-
nents between the base fluid and the nanoparticle may obscure
the energy change resulting from the interaction, especially for
the case where there is a much larger difference in the energy
between the nanoparticle and the base fluid. Therefore, it is
necessary to provide an appropriate method to explore this
interaction. According to the thermal equilibrium model men-
tioned in Section 3.1, we apply the concept of a weighted
average calculation to the energy calculation. That is each
component of the system energy per atom or per interaction
will be averaged by the atom number or interaction number, as
shown in eqn (4),
Nnp  Enp þ Nbf  Ebf
Eave ¼ (4)
Nnp þ Nbf
where E represents the energy, N represents the atom number
or interaction number (i.e. the bond number, angle number,
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Al2O3 Solar salt
19 18
5.735  10 2.646  1019
and improper angle number), and the subscripts ‘bf’ and
‘np’ denote the nanocomposite, base fluid, and nanoparticle,
respectively. In addition, we define the value from eqn (4)
as Eave,* (where * denotes the name of each energy component,
i.e. pe, coul, vdwl, bond, etc., which were analyzed in
Section 3.2).
Obviously, the calculation of eqn (4) has not considered the
interaction between the nanoparticle and the base fluid. Mean-
while, the different components of energy obtained from MD
simulation are set as EMD,*, which includes the influence of the
relative magnitude of the energy and the interaction between
the nanoparticle and the base fluid. Therefore, the difference
(DE*) between the value of Eave,* and EMD,* can make the
interaction clear. In this paper, we define the DE* as
DE* = Eave,*  EMD,*.
The DE* values for both nanocomposites with different
nanoparticle loadings are shown in Fig. 4. First of all, Fig. 4
shows that the DEke is significantly lower than DEpe. We hence
we believe that the interaction has no influence on the Eke of the
nanocomposite system, and hence the DEpe should dominate. As
can be seen, the DEpe values for both nanocomposites are
positive, that is the EMD,pe is less than Eave,pe. Moreover, the
DEpe value has a positive correlation with the nanoparticle
concentration. This phenomenon indicates that the interaction
between the nanoparticle and the base fluid leads to a reduction
in the potential energy. That is, the force between the nano-
particle and the base fluid force has done work, which should
have an impact on the system’s local configuration. To investi-
gate the interaction influence on the components of the Epe, we
calculated the DEvdwl, DEcoul, etc., as shown in Fig. 4. As can be
seen, there is no noticeable difference between the Eave and EMD
values for both Ebond and Eangle. That is to say, there is no marked
change in the intramolecular configuration. It is also not related
to the change of system SHC. Besides, the Eimpro value of the
base fluid always equals 0 based on the given force field. We
believe that the DEimpro is also not related to the SHC enhance-
ment. Based on the above analysis, we can see that the DEvdwl
and DEcoul dominate of the DEpe. As is well known, the van der
Waals potential energy and the Coulombic potential energy are
both interatomic coupled potentials. The change in van der
Waals potential energy and Coulombic potential energy implies
that the van der Waals and Coulombic forces have done work in
the system. That is, the distance between the ions of the base
fluid and the distance between the nanoparticle atoms and the
base fluid ions has been changed. We believe that the introduc-
tion of nanoparticles pulls in extra force (the van der Waals force
and the Coulombic force may be dominant). This extra force
is the reason leading to the change in local structure. It
restrains the free motion of the ions and leads to extra heat
storage.
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Fig. 4 Energy difference in the nanocomposite system. (a) SiO2 nanocomposite; and (b) Al2O3 nanocomposite (where () indicates that the
corresponding value is negative).

3.4 Compressed layer nanoparticle loading is increased. However, the interaction

To explore the change in structure near the nanoparticle, we
investigate the distribution of the ions near the nanoparticle.
First, we try to investigate the energy in the base fluid. The
interaction between salt ions in the SiO2 nanocomposite and
the Al2O3 nanocomposite is shown in Fig. 5(a and b), respec-
tively. It can be seen that the interaction energy between ions
with the same sign, such as Li+–Li+, has a bigger value when the
energy between ions of opposite sign (i.e. Li+–CO32, or
K+–CO32) has a negative correlation with the nanoparticle
concentration. This is because the electrostatic force plays a
leading role in the ionic liquid.16,17 As is well known, the
electrostatic force can be a repulsive force and an attractive
force between ions with the same sign and opposite signs,
respectively. Therefore, a reduction in the distance between the

Fig. 5 Interaction energy between base fluid ions at 800 K. (a) SiO2 nanocomposite. (b) Al2O3 nanocomposite.

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ions can be obtained from an increase inthe interaction energy
between ions of the same sign and a decrease inthe interaction
energy between ions of opposite sign. According to the ion-
interaction investigation, we can deduce that the distance
between salt ions is reduced due to the existence of the force
between the nanoparticle atoms and the base salt ions.
Meanwhile, the ion distribution is also investigated in this
section as shown in Fig. 6. For both nanocomposites, there is
an area of relatively higher density and a thickness of about 4 Å
at a distance of 2–3 Å from the nanoparticle surface. Many
studies define this layer as the compressed layer.8 But there is
also a difference in the ion distribution between these two
nanocomposites. For the SiO2 nanocomposite, the interaction
between the nanoparticle and base fluid accumulates all kinds
of base fluid ions (i.e. Li+ and K+ and CO32). Differently, there
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are only more K+ and CO32 in the compressed layer in the
Al2O3 nanocomposite. These distinct results may come from
the difference in the potential function and charge distribution
between the SiO2 and Al2O3 nanoparticles. Meanwhile, the
Coulombic force between the nanoparticle the and ions of
the base fluid may be attractive and will lead to a decrease in
Ecoul, while the decrease of the distance between the ions of the
base fluid will lead to an increment in Ecoul of the base fluid.
Hence, the DEcoul of the nanocomposite system may increase or
Fig. 6 Salt-ion distribution (where the distance is the distance from the geometric center of the nanoparticle). (a) SiO2 nanocomposite. (b) Al2O3
nanocomposite.
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decrease with different nanoparticle loadings. This can also
explain the fact that there is indeed no obvious correlation
between DEcoul and the nanoparticle loading in some nano-
composites such as the SiO2 nanocomposite in this study.
In summary, the compressed layer is caused by the force
between the nanoparticle and the base fluid. We can also
express that this force, either an attractive force or a repulsive
force, builds a constraint on the ions in the base fluid, which
may be compared to a virtual spring system between the
nanoparticle and the base fluid, as shown in Fig. 7. As is well
known, the system temperature depends on the intensity of the
atomic motion, which means that the higher the intensity of
atomic motion, the higher the temperature of the system.
Because of the constraint on the ions induced by the nanopar-
ticle, there must be more energy input to force the base fluid
atomic motion to the higher intensity when the temperature
increases. This phenomenon is similar to the phase transition
process, which can provide more energy storage in the system,
and leads to the enhancement of the specific heat capacity.
In addition, we can also discover the reason why only a
particle in the nanoscale can provide an enhancement of the
SHC. The nanoparticle has a significantly larger specific surface
area. In other words, there is a much larger contact area
between the nanoparticle and the base fluid, and hence more
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Fig. 7 Schematic diagram of the local structure near the nanoparticle
(virtual spring system).
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interaction in the nanocomposite. If the size of the particle is
set at the micrometer scale or millimeter scale, there will be a
much lower contact area and compressed layer than that of the
nanoparticle case.
4. Conclusions
In this paper, we investigated the specific heat capacity of two
molten salt-based nanocomposites, i.e., the SiO2–binary carbo-
nate and the Al2O3–binary carbonate using molecular dynamics
simulations. The results show that there is indeed an anom-
alous enhancement in the specific heat capacity of the base
fluid induced by nanoparticle introduction for both nano-
composites. Moreover, the specific heat capacity of these two
nanocomposites has a bigger value with the increment of the
nanoparticle concentration.
To explore the mechanism behind the specific heat capacity
enhancement, the related pieces of evidence from the literature
are first analyzed. The main contradiction between previous
pieces of evidence is explained for the first time. We found that
the change of the nanocomposite SHC is not related to the
change of the system potential energy. The relative magnitude
of the energy components between the base fluid and the
nanoparticle is the reason leading to the change of the nano-
composite system energy. Following the analysis of the contra-
diction, the interactions between the nanoparticle and the base
fluid and the local structure near the nanoparticle are studied
in depth. Our results demonstrate that the introduction of the
nanoparticle introduces the extra force into the system and
creates a constraint near the surface of the nanoparticle, which
leads to enhancement of the SHC of the molten salt-based
nanofluid. In other words, a strong interaction between the
nanoparticle and the base fluid is the real reason for the
specific heat capacity enhancement of the molten salt-based
nanofluid, and similar conclusions are also obtained in the
research of Carrillo–Berdugo’s group.30,31
We believe that our investigation will contribute to obtain-
ing a consistent conclusion about the mechanism behind the
SHC enhancement of molten salt-based nanofluids and predict
the thermophysical properties more precisely. Our conclusions
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will also inspire more researchers to provide innovative and
reasonable investigations on nanofluids.
Conflicts of interest
There are no conflicts of interest to declare.
Acknowledgements
This work is supported by the National Natural Science Founda-
tion of China (Grant No. 51806064 and 51676069) and the
Fundamental Research Funds for the Central Universities
(Grant No. 2018QN034).
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