九州影院

In 1834, Michael Faraday reported his first discovery of the laws of electrolysis, mostly through experiments in molten salts. The field has continued to grow ever since, with developments of various liquid salts, including, but not limited to, oxide melts, ionic liquids, and deep eutectic solvents.

In the context of the global challenges facing our present civilisation, energy technologies and their supporting materials are crucial. A great many opportunities remain, particularly for thermal, electrochemical and nuclear energy vectors in relation to liquid salts. Even fossil energy, and the related CO₂ capture, conversion and utilisation can be accommodated efficiently in liquid salts-based processes and devices.

Thanks to their great range of working temperatures, liquid salt innovations can offer significant benefits for improving energy efficiency and reducing the environmental impact of the production of many materials and of processing technologies. Yet, technological advancement relies heavily on a sound understanding of the underlying science of the huge number of liquid salts and their widely varying properties.

With a focus on energy and materials, this Faraday Discussion will offer a unique opportunity for all scientists and engineers to present, discuss and debate recent discoveries and future developments in relation to the understanding and applications of liquid salts, particularly at elevated temperatures.

Themes

• Benefits to energy efficiency and environmental impact

This session will discuss energy efficiency in process chemistry and engineering including, but not limited to, production and processing of both known and new materials in liquid salts, such as:
? nanostructured silicon, carbon, and ceramics,
? carbon-metal, carbon-ceramic, and metal-ceramic hybrids,
? biomass extractions and derivatives.

• Improvements of energy conversion and storage

This session will cover energy conversion, thermal and electrochemical energy storage, CO₂ capture and utilisation, and the related materials issues and innovation, with a highlight of recent progresses in supercapacitors, direct carbon fuel cells, the so called molten-air rechargeable batteries, and others.

• Developments for nuclear reactors and spent fuels processing

Molten salts based reactors are discussed in conjunction with improved and novel technologies for processing spent fuels in both ionic liquids and molten salts, including the electrolytic approach.

• Advancement in knowledge of phenomena and processes

Advancements in all fundamental aspects of ionic liquids, deep eutectic solvents, oxide melts, and molten salts, specifically interfacial phenomena and processes, will be discussed and debated in relation to energy conversion and storage, and the supporting materials.

Aims

This Faraday Discussion aims to bring together scientists and engineers from academia and industry to discuss and debate the state of the art in liquid salts, to development of a better understanding of their fundamental properties and how their application can help in addressing some of the most important current global challenges.

Format

The Faraday Division have been organising high impact Faraday Discussions in rapidly developing areas of physical chemistry and its interfaces with other scientific disciplines for over 100 years.
Faraday Discussions have a special format where research papers written by the speakers are distributed to all participants before the meeting, and most of the meeting is devoted to discussing the papers. Everyone contributes to the discussion - including presenting their own relevant research.
The research papers and a record of the discussion are published in the journal Faraday Discussions.

The format of the Faraday Discussions meeting is ideal for discussions that transgress the many emerging experimental technologies and theoretical approaches. An auxiliary benefit of the meeting is to bring together established researchers in the field with the new community coming through.