About this Abstract |
| Meeting |
2027 TMS Annual Meeting & Exhibition
|
| Symposium
|
Spectroscopic Methods and Analysis for Nuclear Energy Related Materials
|
| Presentation Title |
In-Situ UV–Vis Quantification of Chlorobasicity in Binary Molten Chlorides: A Spectroscopic Framework for Molten Salt Reactor Chemistry |
| Author(s) |
Adrien Couet, Kailee Buttice, Shubhojit Banerjee, Thiago J. Pinheiro dos Santos, Ellie Kim, Qiufeng Yang, Alejandro Ramos-Ballesteros, Sheng Dai, Ruchi Gakhar, Santanu Roy, Vyacheslav S. Bryantsev |
| On-Site Speaker (Planned) |
Adrien Couet |
| Abstract Scope |
Chlorobasicity, the effective Lewis basicity of a molten chloride melt, controls redox equilibria, dissolved-metal speciation, and corrosion of structural alloys in molten salt reactors (MSRs), yet has remained poorly quantified across MSR-relevant compositions. We report systematic in-situ UV-Vis measurements using dilute Bił⁺ as a spectroscopic dopant on the Duffy-Ingram optical basicity scale in three binary chloride systems, LiCl-KCl, MgCl2-KCl, and ZnCl2-KCl, as functions of composition and temperature. LiCl-KCl exhibits high, weakly composition-dependent optical basicity, while both divalent-cation systems display steep, non-linear dependencies reminiscent of acid-base titration curves. Machine-learning force-field molecular dynamics identifies the origin of this non-linearity as a compositional transition between isolated tetrahedral coordination and extended chloride-bridged networks. The work establishes a spectroscopic chlorobasicity scale with direct implications for redox buffering, actinide speciation, and corrosion of structural alloys in MSR concepts. |
| Proceedings Inclusion? |
Planned: |
| Keywords |
Environmental Effects, Nuclear Materials, Other |