High temperature corrosion on heat exchanger material exposed to alkali salt deposits

Abstract: Power generation through decentralized small scale CHP would facilitate the use of biomass as an energy source, with the externally fired gas turbine (EFGT) being a promising technology due to its high electrical efficiency. In an EFGT hot flue gases are heat-exchanged with an air cycle, driving the turbine. The operation requires higher flue gas temperatures than other technologies, for example steam turbines, to achieve optimal performance.  The operating conditions subjects the high temperature heat exchanger (HT-HE) to both physical and chemical stress, with the corrosion related issues yet to be solved. Problems concerning deposit formation and corrosion, on for example super heaters and heat exchangers, when firing biomass are important issues even in commercially available technologies, where the choice of fuel and fuel additives together with component design and choice of material plays important roles in order to minimize the problems. The significantly higher temperatures of the heat transferring surfaces for an EFGT entails combustion deposit related problems less studied. The evaluation of turbine control, deposit formation and corrosion as well as design of the HT-HE and system integration will enable the development of the EFGT technology for applications with small- and medium-size biomass combustion. In this work four potential HT-HE alloys of various grades have been evaluated with respect to corrosion resistance, when exposed to alkali salts and salt mixtures in the KCl-K2CO3-K2SO4 system. The exposures were done in a tube furnace during 24 h for each experiment at four temperature levels between 700–1000oC. Morphological and elemental analysis of the alloy surface and corrosion layers was performed with SEM-EDS. The presence of KCl in the salt caused the most severe corrosion attacks while the corrosion attacks of the pure sulfate and carbonate were more modest. Significant differences between the four materials were observed. X20 experienced severe corrosion, with corrosion scale formation in most cases. The KCl-containing salts caused 253MA to form corrosion scales at all temperatures, while the corrosion resistance to other salts was fairly good. Inconel 600 had the second best overall corrosion resistance. However, it should be pointed out that in some cases the alloy was surpassed by 253MA. Kanthal showed the best overall performance, with limited corrosion scale formation and surprisingly high corrosion resistance to the KCl-containing ternary salt mixture at 900°C and 1000°C.