TWI has designed and constructed a new high-temperature test facility for assessment of material performance in environments containing up to 1000ppm HCl in air, at ambient pressure and temperatures up to 600◦C.
The facility has been used for a group sponsored project to develop coating technologies for high temperature, chlorine-induced, corrosion mitigation in biomass, waste to energy and other process plants, where it allowed the team to evaluate the performance of coated superheater tubes for boiler applications.
Located within TWI's Trevor Gooch Corrosion Laboratory, equipment comprises two, 10kW, front loading kilns, which incorporate corrosion test cells (335mm internal diameter x470mm long), manufactured from 316 stainless steel. These can support testing of samples for several months at a time, with continuous temperature monitoring. Samples can be tested with and without molten salt mixtures. These can be introduced using alumina crucibles containing the appropriate salt mixtures and samples. Due to the capacity of the cells, the facility can be utilised for testing other materials subject to gaseous HCl attack in other industrial applications.
Concentrations >200ppm HCl can only be provided as a gas (from cylinders containing a maximum of 1%HCl) and this requires additional safety measures including gas detection sensors and restricted access to personnel, because the short term exposure limit for hydrogen chloride gas is 5ppm.
For further information please contact us, or see our high temperature corrosion page.