Additive Manufacturing of Corrosion Resistant Ultra-High Temperature Ceramic Materials for Chloride Salt-to-sCO2 Brayton Cycle Heat Exchangers

This project seeks to develop an additively manufactured, nickel superalloy primary heat exchanger for advanced molten salt concentrated solar-thermal power systems. The primary heat exchanger will be made using nickel superalloys and laser powder bed 3-D printing, resulting in a compact design that is durable under cyclic operation at high temperatures and pressures in a corrosive salt environment. During the first phase of the project, different alloy powders are fabricated and characterized and then tested, both in conditions representative of Generation 3 concentrating solar-thermal power systems 720 ° Celsius and supercritical carbon dioxide pressures of 200 bar and at conditions relevant to current commercial systems molten nitrate salt at temperatures up to 550 ° C. The team aims to validate a thermal model that can predict performance in a chloride salt environment and plans to use this model to develop a 20-kilowatt design to test the mechanical integrity of the fabricated primary heat exchanger.