High-temperature corrosion in mixed gas environments

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Scaling reactions between pure metals and multiple oxidant gases are reviewed briefly. It is recognized that elemental oxidant activities are usually so low that the actual reactant species are heteronuclear molecules such as SO2, CO2, etc. The formation of duplex, sulfide-oxide scales on iron and manganese, even when sulfide is unstable with respect to oxide, is attributed to direct reaction with SO2. The persistence of the metastable sulfide is due to its preservation by the rapidly growing scale. The reaction of pure chromium with a number of mixed gases is also discussed. The continued formation of carbides and nitrides beneath an external Cr2O3 scale layer indicates that the latter material is permeable to gas species. Interaction among different gas species is observed, and is attributed to selective adsorption on internal surfaces within the chromium oxide. New work on the reaction of alloys with mixed gases is reported. Several austenitic heat-resistant alloys were exposed at 1000°C to gases containing one, two or all of the oxidants carbon, sulfur and oxygen. Gases containing two or more oxidants produced multiple zones of internal precipitation. The precipitates were chromium-rich oxides, sulfides and carbides arranged in order of thermodynamic stability: oxides beneath the external scale, carbides deepest within the alloys and sulfides in an intermediate zone overlapping the oxide zone. Each precipitate zone widened according to parabolic kinetics. This finding confirms the as yet untested prediction made by J. L. Meijering in 1971. However, the rate at which a particular zone grows changes according to presence of other oxidants. Interactions between the oxidants can be large and reaction rates are currently not predictable.