Experimental process for material testing in molten salt environments for hydrogen production processes

Abstract

Production, transformation, and use of energy are the main sources of environmental problems such as acid rain, ozone depletion, and climate change. One avenue to clean energy is the hydrogen economy, and a promising method for sustainable hydrogen production is the copper - chlorine cycle (Cu–Cl), in which overall water splitting is achieved through a series of thermochemical reactions. Hydrogen produced from this reaction is an energy vector, storing waste energy extracted from high temperature industrial processes and increasing the overall energy utilization. These reactions occur at various temperatures up to 550 °C and in corrosive environments that can cause materials to deteriorate. The authors designed and built an experimental apparatus to investigate the corrosion of materials by exposing nickel-based and stainless steel alloy samples to cuprous chloride (CuCl) vapours at 450 °C. The corrosion behaviour of different materials was studied. The experiments showed that 316 stainless steel produced roughly ten times as much corrosion product compared to nickel-based alloys. The alloys studied exhibited similar amounts of corrosion product growth. The results indicate that both nickel and chromium are needed to promote corrosion resistance.