Abstract
Salt impurities directly affect degradation of structural materials in molten salt environments, so impurity quantification and analysis of salts is important for the deployment of next generation molten salt nuclear reactors. Despite the importance of moisture and other oxygen containing impurities, reliable methods of measuring these impurities are not well qualified or commonly used. Herein, we present two methods for analysis of oxygen content and one method for analysis of hydrogen content in fluoride salts demonstrated on two batches of LiF-NaF-KF (FLiNaK) salt with differing purity levels. The intentional addition of varying amounts of oxygen and hydrogen to the FLiNaK salt as internal standards produced a linear response using a commercial combustion analysis instrument, and measured amounts were consistent with the standards. These results indicate the technique is a valid method for measuring oxygen and hydrogen content in fluoride salts. Corrosion studies of 316H in FLiNaK revealed 5 times more mass loss in the salt containing more impurities including hydrogen and transition metals.
| Original language | English |
|---|---|
| Article number | 152972 |
| Journal | Journal of Nuclear Materials |
| Volume | 553 |
| DOIs | |
| State | Published - Sep 2021 |
Funding
This research was funded by The U.S. Department of Energy, Office of Nuclear Energy, Molten Salt Reactor Campaign Notice: This manuscript has been authored by UT-Battelle, LLC under Contract No. DE-AC05-00OR22725 with the U.S. Department of Energy. The United States Government retains and the publisher, by accepting the article for publication, acknowledges that the United States Government retains a non-exclusive, paid-up, irrevocable, world-wide license to publish or reproduce the published form of this manuscript, or allow others to do so, for United States Government purposes. The Department of Energy 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 ). The authors acknowledge the assistance at ORNL of Jordan Massengale with purification and transfer of FLiNaK salt, Brandon Johnston with preparing the 316H specimens, Adam Willoughby with the capsule experiments, Tracie Lowe with the SEM and Victoria Cox with metallography. B. Pint and J. Keiser provided helpful comments on the manuscript. This research was funded by The U.S. Department of Energy, Office of Nuclear Energy, Molten Salt Reactor Campaign