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Engineering

Liquid metal pumped at a record temperature

Nature volume 550, pages 194–195 (2017)Cite this article

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Although liquid metals are effective fluids for heat transfer, pumping them at high temperatures is limited by their corrosiveness to solid metals. A clever pump design addresses this challenge using only ceramics. See Article p.199

Every energy-conversion process produces heat as a product or by-product. Thermal energy is therefore one of the most abundant forms of energy in the industrial world. The conversion of this heat to more-useful forms of energy would dramatically improve the efficiency of many industrial processes and has been the focus of intensive research. Thermal energy is most valuable when it's transported, stored or converted at high temperatures (greater than 1,300 kelvin1). However, few materials can ensure reliable heat transfer at such temperatures without either melting, losing their load-bearing capacity or corroding. On page 199, Amy et al.2 use a careful engineering design to bypass the inherent weaknesses of ceramic materials3, such as brittleness, and construct an all-ceramic pump system that is capable of circulating liquid tin at temperatures of up to 1,673 K.

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Figure 1: Liquid tin circulated in an all-ceramic pump system.

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References

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. the Belgian Nuclear Research Centre (SCK·CEN), Mol, 2400, Belgium

    Konstantina Lambrinou

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  1. Konstantina Lambrinou
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Correspondence to Konstantina Lambrinou.

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Lambrinou, K. Liquid metal pumped at a record temperature. Nature 550, 194–195 (2017). https://doi.org/10.1038/550194b

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