Revealing 3D Morphological and Chemical Evolution Mechanisms of Metals in Molten Salt by Multimodal Microscopy

Arthur Ronne, Lingfeng He, Dmitriy Dolzhnikov, Yi Xie, Mingyuan Ge, Phillip Halstenberg, Yachun Wang, Benjamin T. Manard, Xianghui Xiao, Wah Keat Lee, Kotaro Sasaki, Sheng Dai, Shannon M. Mahurin, Yu Chen Karen Chen-Wiegart

Research output: Contribution to journalArticlepeer-review

26 Scopus citations

Abstract

Growing interest in molten salts as effective high-temperature heat-transfer fluids for sustainable energy systems drives a critical need to fundamentally understand the interactions between metals and molten salts. This work utilizes the multimodal microscopy methods of synchrotron X-ray nanotomography and electron microscopy to investigate the 3D morphological and chemical evolution of two-model systems, pure nickel metal and Ni-20Cr binary alloy, in a representative molten salt (KCl-MgCl2 50-50 mol %, 800 °C). In both systems, unexpected shell-like structures formed because of the presence of more noble tungsten, suggesting a potential route of using Ni-W alloys for enhanced molten-salt corrosion resistance. The binary alloy Ni-20Cr developed a bicontinuous porous structure, reassembling functional porous metals manufactured by dealloying. This work elucidates better mechanistic understanding of corrosion in molten salts, which can contribute to the design of more reliable alloys for molten salt applications including next-generation nuclear and solar power plants and opens the possibility of using molten salts to fabricate functional porous materials.

Original languageEnglish
Pages (from-to)17321-17333
Number of pages13
JournalACS Applied Materials and Interfaces
Volume12
Issue number15
DOIs
StatePublished - Apr 15 2020

Funding

This work was supported as part of the Molten Salts in Extreme Environments (MSEE) Energy Frontier Research Center, funded by the U.S. Department of Energy, Office of Science, Basic Energy Sciences. BNL, INL, and ORNL are operated under DOE contracts DE-SC0012704, DE-AC07-05ID14517, and DE-AC05-00OR22725, respectively. Work at Stony Brook University was supported by MSEE through a subcontract from BNL. This research used resources and the Full Field X-ray Imaging (FXI, 18-ID) beamline of the National Synchrotron Light Source II, a U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) Office of Science User Facility operated for the DOE Office of Science by Brookhaven National Laboratory under Contract DE-SC0012704. This research used resources of the Center for Functional Nanomaterials, which is a U.S. DOE Office of Science Facility, at Brookhaven National Laboratory under Contract DE-SC0012704. The authors acknowledge the support from CFN staff clean room access and training, and SEM training was provided by Gwen Wright. Chen-Wiegart group members are acknowledged for conducting the FXI beamtime experiment together and assisting with preliminary analysis: Cheng-Hung Lin, Xiaoyang Liu, Lijie Zou, and Chonghang Zhao. The authors acknowledge the assistance with sample and setup preparation from Bobby Layne.

Keywords

  • Ni-based alloys
  • TXM
  • X-ray CT
  • chloride molten salt
  • dealloying
  • high-temperature corrosion
  • molten salt corrosion
  • multiscale imaging

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