Abstract
Two-sided oxidation experiments were recently conducted at 900°C–1200 °C in flowing steam with samples of sponge-based Zr-1Nb alloy E110. Although the old electrolytic E110 tubing exhibited a high degree of susceptibility to nodular corrosion and experienced breakaway oxidation rates in a relatively short time, the new sponge-based E110 demonstrated steam oxidation behavior comparable to Zircaloy-4. Sample weight gain and oxide layer thickness measurements were performed on oxidized E110 specimens and compared to oxygen pickup and oxide layer thickness calculations using the Cathcart-Pawel correlation. Our study shows that the sponge-based E110 follows the parabolic law at temperatures above 1015 °C. At or below 1015 °C, the oxidation rate was very low when compared to Zircaloy-4 and can be represented by a cubic expression. No breakaway oxidation was observed at 1000 °C for oxidation times up to 10,000 s. Arrhenius expressions are given to describe the parabolic rate constants at temperatures above 1015 °C and cubic rate constants are provided for temperatures below 1015 °C. The weight gains calculated by our equations are in excellent agreement with the measured sample weight gains at all test temperatures. In addition to the as-fabricated E110 cladding sample, prehydrided E110 cladding with hydrogen concentrations in the 100–150 wppm range was also investigated. The effect of hydrogen content on sponge-based E110 oxidation kinetics was minimal. No significant difference was found between as-fabricated and hydrided samples with regard to oxygen pickup and oxide layer thickness for hydrogen contents below 150 wppm.
| Original language | English |
|---|---|
| Pages (from-to) | 595-612 |
| Number of pages | 18 |
| Journal | Journal of Nuclear Materials |
| Volume | 499 |
| DOIs | |
| State | Published - Feb 2018 |
Funding
This manuscript was authored by UT-Battelle, LLC, under contract DE-AC05-00OR22725 with the US Department of Energy (DOE). The US government retains and the publisher, by accepting the article for publication, acknowledges that the US government retains a nonexclusive, paid-up, irrevocable, worldwide license to publish or reproduce the published form of this manuscript, or allow others to do so, for US government purposes. DOE will provide public access to these results of federally sponsored research in accordance with the DOE Public Access Plan ( http://energy.gov/downloads/doe-public-access-plan ). This work was sponsored by the Joint Stock Company ?A.A. Bochvar High-Technology Research Institute of Inorganic Materials? (JSC ?VNIINM?) under Contract No. WF703701. We would like to express our appreciation to T. Geer for his help on metallographic mount preparation and examinations. We are particularly grateful to Dr. V. Novikov (VNINM) for his technical guidance in pretest planning and posttest data interpretation, which resulted in significant contributions to this work. We would like thank Dr. V. Markelov (VNINM) and Mr. A. Malgin (VNINM) for sharing their experience and expertise to help us better interpret test results and Mr. D. Yan (Vanderbilt University) for his assistance on computer programing and algorithm development.
| Funders | Funder number |
|---|---|
| U.S. Department of Energy | |
| Vanderbilt University |