Analytical prediction of heat capacity of molten AgCl and CuCl with application to thermochemical Cu-Cl cycle for hydrogen production

To sustain our power-dependent world, there is a need for technological innovation in all aspects of science and engineering. Many times, thermophysical and material properties are not well defined for the specific application, which leads to implementing assumptions and approximations from the published data. In the thermochemical copper-chlorine (Cu-Cl) cycle for hydrogen (H₂) production, heat is recovered from cuprous chloride (CuCl) molten salt and it is then reacted with hydrochloric acid (HCl) in stoichiometric proportions to produce the anolyte for the H₂ production step of the cycle. However, the lack of precise thermophysical properties on CuCl heavily hinders the detailed investigations of heat recovery from the molten salt as it cools from 450 °C to 90 °C. In this paper a new method is developed to determine the thermophysical property of CuCl and silver chloride (AgCl) as the molten salts are changing phases to solid. This is achieved by correlating electrochemistry data with thermal data. A model that predicts the specific heat capacity during phase change process is developed based on the existing electromotive force (EMF) and thermal data from literature. Developed model shows the EMF derived specific heat capacity values of AgCl and CuCl are similar with a slight offset since they have similar EMF's at higher temperatures.