[vintermann]

I wonder if there are any chemical effects from heating the sand to 500 degrees Celsius. Finely roasted sand.

[grues-dinner]

This is crushed soapstone, so it's mostly talc. Talc is apparently more or less stable up to about 800C, where it starts to break down into enstatite and silica: https://nvlpubs.nist.gov/nistpubs/jres/15/jresv15n5p551_A1b....

If it were pure silica sand, you could presumably get even hotter before anything changes chemically, but at the that point you start having materials issues with metal parts of the system: 500C is about the limit for ordinary steels to lose strength (and many are less than that - heat effects can often start at 300C).

[isoprophlex]

Interesting, thanks for pointing that out, I didnt catch that they're not using actual sand.

[isoprophlex]

None, really. Pure, fine sand being mostly silicon dioxide, it melts at ~2000 and boils at ~3000 C, still without decomposing or reacting. It is really extremely chemically stable.

That said in practice, at scale... before filling up your storage tank you'd probably need to pre-heat it once to remove all moisture and volatile gunk adsorbed onto the sand.

[LtdJorge]

It's as inert as it gets