Oxidation and carburizing of FBR structural materials in carbon dioxide

Furukawa, Tomohiro  ; Rouillard, F.*

The application of a supercritical carbon dioxide (SC-CO) turbine cycle to fast rectors has the potential to enhance reliability because the SC-CO turbine system is capable of replacing the steam generator turbine system of conventional sodium cooled fast reactors. A key problem in the application is the corrosion of structural material by SC-CO at high temperatures. The authors have performed corrosion test on high-chromium martensitic and austenitic stainless steels in CO under the pressure conditions from atmospheric pressure to 25 MPa at elevated temperature, and proposed corrosion allowances of the steels for preliminary design of the SC-CO system. This paper initially reports the results of metallurgical examination of the steels after 8010 hours in SC-CO which is the longest immersion data in our experiments, and then describes the behavior of the oxide growth from the view point of estimation of the corrosion allowance for the design.