from the conferences organized by TANGER Ltd.
The use of salt mixtures properties is considered in many future technologies, such as energy storage or medium for nuclear reactors. The key question is to choose a suitable construction material for these devices operating at high temperatures in a corrosive environment. Nickel alloys show high corrosion resistance at high exposure temperatures, and literary sources also describe resistance in the environment of fluoride salts. This work verified the corrosion behavior of two nickel alloys in molten chloride salts. Nickel-based superalloys Hastelloy C22 and MoNiCr were tested in a mixture of chloride salts LiCl - KCl (58.2 - 41.8 wt%). Alloys samples were heated in salt melts for 500 h at 440 °C in an inert atmosphere of argon. After removal, they were analyzed gravimetrically, the composition of the surface layers by the XPS and cross-section of samples using SEM. The gravimetric evaluation showed no significant changes after exposure. This was also confirmed by SEM and XPS results, which demonstrate the formation of very thin layers of nickel and chromium oxides up to 1 µm thick.
Keywords: Nickel alloy, molten chloride salts, corrosion, nuclear reactor© This is an open access article distributed under the Creative Commons Attribution License which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.