Developing dialkylammonium halide salts for industrial heat recovery at medium temperatures

Abstract

Today, continued population growth is leading to ever-increasing energy demand, which is driving the use of fossil fuels in today's energy consumption system. However, this entails a series of potentially harmful environmental impacts, among which global warming and the anthropogenic greenhouse effect stand out. Therefore, it is imperative to create sustainable solutions that will mitigate the consumption of fossil fuels and replace them with more efficient and environmentally friendly technologies. One of the main challenges of the current energy system is to reduce the amount of thermal energy losses generated daily, especially in the industrial sector, which is responsible for a significant part of these losses. It is estimated that approximately 70% of the world's primary energy is dissipated in the form of waste heat, which has adverse environmental effects and also produces considerable economic losses due to the absence of efficient energy recovery and storage systems. Throughout this project, we report the synthesis of new dialkylammonium halide salt compounds, whose general structure can be expressed as (CnH2n+1)2NH2X, with different chain lengths (n = 10, 14, 16) and two types of halide anions (X = Cl, Br). They were characterized by powder X ray diffraction (PXRD) and differential scanning calorimetry (DSC). The results show an evident correlation between chain length and lattice parameters, as well as improved transition temperature and enthalpy properties for the bromide salts, which are fundamental for industrial thermal storage applications. Some synthesized materials, like (C16)2Cl, obtained promising technical results, exhibiting outstanding thermal behavior. This investigation aims to illustrate the potential of novel and emerging materials, such as dialkylammonium halide salts, which have exhibited the desirable sustainable and efficient characteristics to aid in the energy transition.