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Late News Poster Session: On-Demand Poster Session: Corrosion
Program Organizers: TMS Administration

Monday 8:00 AM
March 14, 2022
Room: Corrosion
Location: On-Demand Poster Hall

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Development of Mg2+/0 Reference Electrode Chemistry for the Electrochemical Investigation of Nickel Alloy Corrosion in UCl3 Containing Chloride Melts: Charles Lhermitte¹; Scott Parker¹; Matt Jackson¹; Marisa Monreal¹; ¹Los Alamos National Laboratory
    Understanding corrosion in the presence of actinides is key to the development of improved materials for molten salt reactors, as well as for improving pyrochemical processes. Electrochemistry plays an important role in studying actinide behavior in these systems. One key challenge with performing electrochemistry in molten salts is the lack of a good reference electrode. The most commonly used reference electrodes are either challenging to prepare, or provide unreliable reference potentials. In this report, we describe the use of the Mg2+/0 couple as a reference in molten MgCl2-NaCl. We demonstrate that this reference is straightforward to prepare and to use, in addition to providing a robust and reliable reference potential over a range of melt temperatures (500 – 675 °C). Finally, using this new type of reference electrode, we perform electrochemical experiments to investigate the thermodynamic favorability, as well as the kinetics of, nickel corrosion in actinide bearing chloride melts.

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