Abstract
New ductile experimental FeCrAl alloys, based on the composition of Fe–10Cr–4Al, were exposed to stagnant liquid lead at 750 °C for up to 1970 h. Two exposures with different test conditions were performed: one with addition of oxygen (as H2O) to the liquid lead and one without. The experimental alloys showed generally good oxidation and self-healing properties. The exposures showed that this specific category of steels has the potential to operate in liquid lead at very high temperatures with only minor oxidation. With this new material development, new energy technologies such as the CSP plants may be able to utilize liquid lead at very high temperatures as heat transfer fluid, thus achieving increased thermal efficiency.
Highlights
A promising clean energy production technology that could reduce the world’s dependency on fossil fuel is the concentrated solar power (CSP) technology, which has the potential to reach high efficiencies by utilizing high temperatures
The limitations are mainly due to the disintegration of conventional liquid heat transfer fluids (HTFs), such as nitrate-based solar salts, and by the corrosion rates of commercial construction materials that will increase with temperature [1,2,3,4,5,6]
These drawbacks have initiated a search for HTFs that are better suited at high temperatures and high heat fluxes, and here, liquid lead has been suggested as a potential candidate
Summary
A promising clean energy production technology that could reduce the world’s dependency on fossil fuel is the concentrated solar power (CSP) technology, which has the potential to reach high efficiencies by utilizing high temperatures. The limitations are mainly due to the disintegration of conventional liquid heat transfer fluids (HTFs), such as nitrate-based solar salts, and by the corrosion rates of commercial construction materials that will increase with temperature [1,2,3,4,5,6] These drawbacks have initiated a search for HTFs that are better suited at high temperatures and high heat fluxes, and here, liquid lead has been suggested as a potential candidate. It would open up the possibility to use supercritical CO2 in combination with a Brayton cycle in the secondary loop, rather than the commonly used steam Rankine cycle This would be beneficial for several reasons such as increased thermal efficiencies, reduced plant size (i.e. reduced capital costs) as well as reduced greenhouse gas emissions and lower water consumption [9,10,11]
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