Over half of the energy produced from the combustion of fossil fuels is lost as waste heat.  The reversible dehydration- rehydration cycle of a metal salt has been suggested as one way to recover and use this waste heat to reduce the amount of fossil fuels consumed.  We are investigating the decomposition pathways the water insoluble metal oxalates of magnesium, calcium, and zinc and the mixed metal water soluble potassium metal oxalates of chromium, cobalt, nickel, and copper to determine the advantages and disadvantages of using each compound for waste heat recovery.  Thermal gravimetric analysis, evolved gas analysis- FTIR, attenuated total reflextance -FTIR and powder x-ray analysis are used to establish the dehydration pathways and the thermal stability of the compounds.  Once the decomposition is known,  differential scanning calorimetry is used to measure the enthalpy change for the dehydrations. By measuring the DSC under oxidizing conditions in the presence of a flameless combustion catalyst,  we have also beed able to determine the enthalpies of formation for the compounds where these measurements had not been established.

Hydration: Dehydration of metal salts for waste heat recovery

ACS Fall 2021

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