Autumn 2017 Molten Salts Discussion Group www.msdg.org.uk 1

MSDG Autumn Newsletter 2017

Dinner at the Summer meeting in July

Upcoming Meetings: • 22-26 October 2017

Gaune-Escard International Symposium on Sustainable Molten Salt and Ionic Liquid Processing (SIPS), Mexico

• 24-27 October 2017 4th International Conference on Ionic Liquid-based Materials, Spain

• 3-6 December 2017 Ionic Liquids and their Interfaces, Germany

• 18 December 2017 MSDG Christmas meeting, Royal Society of Chemistry, Burlington House, London

• 20-23 March 2018 Electrostatics in Concentrated Electroytes, Switzerland

• 10-13 June 2018 6th International Round Table on Titanium Production in Molten Salts, Iceland

• 12-17 August 2018 Gordon Research Conference on Ionic Liquids, USA

• 7-12 October 2018 27th EuCHeM Conference on Molten Salts and Ionic Liquids, Portugal

Message from the Chairman, Dr Andrew Doherty Dear Colleagues, The past year has been a very busy and successful one for our Group during which we dissected and discussed the incredibly diverse and important field of liquid salts in all their forms and applications in friendly format. A look through the books of abstracts over recent years (available on-line) reveals not only the highly contemporary nature of our work addressing global challenges as diverse as energy, environmental protection and advanced materials, but the progress from cutting-edge fundamental curiosity-driven research right through to its commercialisation is clearly evident. Demonstrably, we do not work in a vacuum or in Ivory towers and what we do as a community has real and meaningful value and impact on society.

Unsurprisingly, the MSDG grows from strength to strength with an ever-increasing Membership (ca. 130 with the RSC and 365 with Linkedin) and a strategic diversification of activities that include the recent highly successful Faraday Discussion in Ningbo and co-organising the International Forum on Liquid Salts for Energy Storage Materials in Beijing. Of particular note is the Early Career Researchers’ Meetings which bring together the future leaders of MS&ILs who will build the networks and collaborations necessary to address the technical and socioeconomic challenges of the future. Needless to say, the Group is grateful to all those who contributed to the many successful events over the past year but special thanks must go to the Nottingham Industrial Museum and its wonderful volunteers who provided a truly awesome experience of the rich innovative industrial heritage of the English Midlands during our Summer 2017 Research Meeting. I look forward to meeting and working with everyone over the coming year to build on our success.

Andrew Doherty

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MSDG Early Career Researcher Meeting MSDG support: Bursary support to attend IL and molen salt meeting is available through application by contacting the MSDG secretary Andrew Doherty: a.p.doherty@queens-belfast.ac.uk MSDG committee: Chairman: Dr. Andrew Doherty Secretary: Dr. Stuart Mucklejohn Treasurer: Dr. Anna Croft Members:

Prof. Derek Fray Dr. John Slattery Dr. Paticia Hunt Dr. Robert Watson Prof. George Z. Chen Dr. Greg Doughty

International Members: Prof. Marcelle Gaune-Escard Prof. Rasmus Fehrmann Dr. Carsten Schwandt

Co-opted Committee Member: Dr. Trevor Griffiths

The MSDG Early Career Research Meeting was held on 15th September 2017 at Imperial College London, hosted by the research groups of Dr. Patricia Hunt and Prof. Tom Welton. The focus of the meeting was research on molten salts, ionic liquids, deep eutectic solvents and related disciplines. The meeting was free-to-attend, supported by the Royal Society of Chemistry and MSDG. This meeting was specifically tailored to allow students and young researchers to present early results and ideas, to experience an informal conference-like environment and to provide opportunities for discussion and networking in a friendly atmosphere

Prof. Barbara Kirchner and Prof. Tom Welton enjoying coffee between talks

The meeting was well attended with 38 delegates from 13 institutions, with participants travelling from as far as Germany and Australia. Dr. Clint Sharrad (Manchester) and Prof. Barbara Kirchner (Bonn) were invited speakers. Clint Sharrad spoke about experimental spectroscopic research carried out at Manchester. He also highlighted current issues that the UK nuclear industry is facing, and will potentially face in the future. Barbara Kirchner spoke about MD simulations of ionic liquid mixtures. She also gave a brief overview of different theoretical methods, describing relevant features and timescales that are probed by the individual methods. Speakers included Dr. Agniesza Brandt-Talbot, Rebecca Hawker, Eduards Bakis, Joshua Reid, Shannon Stodd, Thomas Wilks, Oliver Hammond, Wanwan Qu, Adrain Sanchez-Fernandez, Alexandra Schindl, Samuel Núñez-Pertíñez.

Posters were an even split between Molten Salt and Ionic Liquid research and were the source of much discussion throughout the breaks.

contribution by Ken Watson

(a) Greg and Neil (Newcastle) with their posters, (b) Tatiana (Manchester) discussing her work and (c) Coby and Eduards (Imperial)

discussing future work

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Prof. Juanyu Yang presenting

The 2017 International Symposium on Liquid Salts for Energy Storage Materials

MSDG, together with GLABAT and the University of Nottingham Ningbo China co-organised this successful meeting held on the 3rd-5th September in Beijing. There were about 100 participants, 20 Keynote lectures and a poster session. The meeting was managed and substantially sponsored by GLABAT led by Shigang Lu, managing director of the company. It took place at the company’s manufacturing site. Derek Fray, former Chair MSDG, congratulated the GLABAT team for having thoughtfully and carefully organised a very successful conference with interesting and topical presentations.

The meeting had a focus on molten salts enabled energy storage technologies and materials, and aimed to bring together scientists, engineers, technologists, and young researchers from across academia and industry to present, discuss and debate their latest advances and future developments in relation to the understanding and applications of liquid salts. Many key speakers were MSDG members, including Derek Fray, Yasuhiko Ito, John Irvine, Geir Martin Haarberg, Toru Okabe, Kathie McGregor, Carsten Schwandt, Hongmin Zhu, Dihua Wang, Shuqiang Jiao, Xianbo Jin, Juanyu Yang, and George Chen.

The forum was unusual in that each keynote was delivered in 10 min with 20 min Q&A time. Each keynote speaker had pre-submitted slides which were distributed to all attendees. This enhanced comprehension of the lectures and greatly facilitated the Q&A session/discussion. After the forum, there was a tour of the pilot lithium ion battery production line and also the molten salt electrolyser for scaling up the FFC Cambridge process for production of silicon nanowires for use in the negative electrode of lithium battery.

Prof Shigang Lu and Prof. George Chen

chairing the conference dinner

The poster session attracted the attention of attendees and, after careful selection by a five member panel, two posters won the FFC Poster Award, presented respectively by Akihiro Iizuka of Tokyo University and Bamidele Akinwolemiwa from University of Nottingham Ningbo China.

contribution by George Chen

Conference photo

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MSDG 2017 Summer Meeting This meeting was held 4-6th July at the University of Nottingham, with about 30 participants. The meeting included an industrial visit to the Nottingham Industrial Museum in the beautiful Wollaton Deer Park was very informative and it was highly enjoyed by all attendees. Fred Starr (Invited) The Discovery of Black Snow and Other Adventures in the World of Molten Slag S. Mucklejohn, Why we need to understand molten salt thermodynamics and phase equilibria to make widgets S. Wilcock (AWE) Electrochemical Reduction of Plutonium Oxide M. Ellis and G. Doughty, Solid State Manufacture of High Entropy Alloys Preliminary Studies. P. Coxon*, H. Kim, D. Fray, Energy applications of black silicon by molten salt electrolysis A. Kamali* and D. Fray, Molten salt preparation of graphene hybrid nanostructures and their applications Y. Gao, C. Yang, C. Zhang, Q. Qin, and G. Chen*, Electrochemical Analysis in Ultrahigh Temperature Molten Slags A. Doherty* and E. Marley, Mechanism and Kinetics of Electro-carboxylation in Ionic Liquid Media D. Vishnu*, J. Sure, R.Kumar and C. Schwandt, Direct electrochemical synthesis of Ti-35Nb-7.9Sn alloy from mixed oxide discs in CaCl2 melt H. Wang*, Z. Yu, S. Fang, C. Zhao, BingYu, N. Wang, and J. Yang, Current progress on molten salt electrolysis in GLABAT

J. Sure*, D.Vishnu, R.Kumar and C. Schwandt, Synthesis of Ti-5Ta-2Nb Alloy from Solid Oxides by Electro-reduction in Molten Salt and its Corrosion Behaviour in Concentrated Nitric Acid K. McHale R. Haines and J. Harper, Towards understanding microscopic interactions in ionic liquids and their effects on SN2 processes S. Muzammala*, C. Jaegera, P. Licence, A. Croft, Molecular Interactions of Protein-based materials with Ionic Liquids Y. Kong, R. Zheng and B. Hua*, The role of C8mimPF6 in miniemulsion stabilized by silica nanoparticles S. Kandhasamy, O.Burheim, A. Solheim, S. Kjelstrup and G. Haarberg*, High Seebeck Coefficient Thermocell with Molten Carbonate Electrolyte D. Gunasekera*, C. Tuck, A. Croft and R. Wildman, Three Dimensional Printing of Biomaterial-Laden Ionic Liquids E. Olsen*, H. Nygård and M. Hansen, Carbon capture in molten salts (CCMS) O. Al-Juboori* and G. Chen, Co-Reduction of Carbon Dioxide and Steam in Molten Electrolytes G. Haarberg*, J. Xu, K. Osen and O. Kjos, A liquid sodium-zinc and molten chloride battery G. Doughty, Solid state production of a seven component niobium silicide-based alloy

Dinner at the Summer meeting in July

Presentation at the Summer meeting in July