Energy from - molten salt?

May 29, 2009 - Dan Whitcomb - Reuters

In these green times energy producers are leaving no stone unturned in the hunt for new sources of energy.

The Los Angeles Times reports that rocket-builder RocketDyne and a Santa Monica-based renewable energy company, SolarReserve, are planning to build a plant that they say could eventually power 100,000 homes by using solar power and molten salt.

The idea, which analysts say is promising, is to use solar power, collected in a huge array of tilting mirrors, to heat up molten salt to over 1,000 degrees Farenheit and use the resulting steam to drive a turbine and generate electricity.

The molten salt would then be cooled and recycled to repeat the process – generating no emissions.

The Times points out that this idea isn’t totally new. In the California desert off Interstate-15, a large solar array of more than 1,800 mirrored panels still stands where a power plant was built as a pilot project using molten salt…