Progress in modeling solidification in molten salt coolants

Molten salts are currently being proposed as a heat carrier medium in the nuclear and the solar concentration energy applications. Due to their high melting temperature, solidi cation of the salts is expected to occur during routine and accidental scenarios. Furthermore, passive safety systems are being proposed based on the solidi cation of the salt. The following article presents new developments in the modeling of eutectic molten salts by means of a multiphase multicomponent phase-field model. An application of this model for the eutectic ternary system LiF-KF-NaF is presented. The model predictions are compared against a newly developed semianalytical solution for a case of directional eutectic solidi cation at stable growth rate. A good qualitative agreement is obtained between the two approaches. The results obtained with the phase- eld model are then used for calculating homogenized properties of the solid phase distribution. These properties can then be feed in a mixture macroscale model more suitable for industrial applications