Molten salt is one of the promising medium materials for molten salt reactors and energy storage systems. Molten salt is advantageous for better physical properties such as low melting point and high boiling point, high energy capacity, high thermal conductivity, and high thermal stability than other medium materials such as water or liquid metals. However, the corrosivity of the molten salt is one of the main factors that disturbs the various applications of the molten salt. On the other hand, metallic 3-D printing technologies have developed by leaps and bounds over the past 20 years and show potential for use in cutting-edge industries such as aerospace and military purposes. However, the biggest problem of 3-D printed products is that the mechanical and physical properties are very weak along the laminated plane that was generated during the manufacturing process. In particular, other research showed that corrosion is vulnerable through the laminated surface, and corrosion along the laminated plane is not completely mitigated through a general heat treatment process although the microstructure of the surface is evaluated to be partially mitigated by the heat treatment. In this study, molten salt corrosion behaviors of simple Ni-based alloy with a composition of 80Ni- 20Cr were analyzed. Ni-based alloys were fabricated by casting and 3-D printing, and some of the 3-D printed specimens were thermally treated at 1,273 K for 1 hour to examine the effects of heat treatment on corrosion behaviors. In molten eutectic NaCl-MgCl2 melts at 973 K, Ni-based alloys were corroded for 1, 3, 7, and 28 days and their microstructural changes were analyzed by SEM-EBSD-EDS and OM. The corrosion behaviors of the alloy were also evaluated by the salt composition measured with ICPOES. 3-D printed alloy with post-treatment showed more resistivity to the molten salt corrosion than as-fabricated 3-D printed alloy. However, the corrosion rate of the 3-D printed specimen after heat treatment was still higher than that made by casting.

Zirconium(Zr) alloys are commonly used in the nuclear industry for applications such as fuel cladding and pressure tubes. To minimize the levels and volumes of radioactive waste, molten salts have been employed for decontaminating Zr alloys. Recently, a two-step Zr metal recovery process, combining electrolysis and thermal decomposition, has been proposed. In the electrolysis process, potentiostatic electrorefining is utilized to control the chemical form of electrodeposits(ZrCl). Although Zr metals are expected to dissolve into molten salts, reductive alloy elements can also be co-dissolved and deposited on the cathode. Therefore, a better understanding of the anodic side’s response during potentiostatic electrorefining is necessary to ensure the purity of recovered Zr and long-term process operation. As the first step, potentiodynamic polarization curves were obtained using Zr, Nb, and Zr-Nb alloy to investigate the anodic dissolution behavior in the molten salts. Nb, which has a redox potential close to Zr, and Zr exhibit active or passivation dissolution mechanisms depending on the potential range. It was confirmed that Zr-Nb alloy also has a passivation region between -0.223 to -0.092 V influenced by the major elements Zr and Nb. Secondly, active dissolution of Zr-Nb was performed in the range of -0.9 to -0.6 V. The dissolution mechanism can be explained by percolation theory, which is consistent with the observed microstructure of the alloy. Thirdly, passivation dissolution of Zr, Nb, and Zr-Nb alloy was investigated to identify the pure passivation products and additional products in the Zr-Nb alloy case. K2ZrCl6 and K3NbCl6 were identified as the pure passivation products of the major elements. In the Zr-Nb alloy case, additional products, such as Nb and NbZr, produced by the redox reaction of nanoparticles in the high viscous salt layer near the anode, were also confirmed. The anodic dissolution mechanism of Zr-Nb alloy can be summarized as follows. During active dissolution, only Zr metal dissolves into molten salts by percolation. Above the solubility near the anode, passivation products begin to form. The anode potential increases due to the disturbance of passivation products on ion flow, leading to co-dissolution of Nb. When the concentration of Nb ion exceeds the solubility, a passivation product of Nb also forms. In this scenario, a high viscous salt layer is formed, which traps nanoparticles of Zr metal, resulting in redox behavior between Zr metal and Nb ion. Some nanoparticles of Zr and Nb metal are also present in the form of NbZr.

Attempts to use the molten salt system in various aspects such as MSR or energy storage systems are increasing. However, there are limitations in the molten salt-assisted technique due to the harsh corrosiveness of the molten salt, and a more detailed study on salt-induced corrosion is needed to solve this problem. In this study, corrosion behaviors of 80Ni-20Cr alloy in various salt environments such as eutectic NaCl-MgCl2 with NiCl2, CrCl2, and EuCl3 additives were investigated. Meanwhile, the corrosion acceleration effects of 80Ni-20Cr specimens were analyzed for various ceramic materials such as SiC, Al2O3, SiO2, graphite, and BN, and metallic materials such as Ni-based alloy, Fe-based alloy, and pure metals in a molten salt environment. The experiments were conducted at 973 K for up to 28 days, and after the experiment, the microstructural change of the specimen was analyzed through SEM-EDS, and salt condition was analyzed by ICP-OES.

A molten salt reactor (MSR) has considerably attracted attention due to its several advantages for the safety and efficiency over the light water reactors. Because the structural material in MSR is contacted with high-temperature liquid fuel during long-term, the excellent material for corrosion resistance is required to be applied in MSR. In this study, we evaluated the corrosion resistance for alloy 600 and 617, which are the nickel-based materials, in KCl molten salt at 800ºC for 100 h under Ar atmosphere containing less than 1 ppm of moisture and oxygen. After the corrosion experiments of alloy 600 and 617, the amount of the weight loss for them caused by the KCl molten salt were determined. In addition, the variation in the crystal structure, surface morphology, and elemental distribution was examined using X-ray diffraction and scanning electron microscopy equipped with energy dispersive X-ray spectroscopy.

Magnesium alloy is becoming known for the lightest material in the metallic materials. Recently the automotive industry has a variety application to the light weight parts replacement. This study focuses on the mechanical property improving through a tiny amount’s CNT addition into the magnesium alloy as AM60. The CNT material is an arduous combination of the metallic materials. Therefore this study is concentrating on the contact force growth for the CNT material. Consequently, the made CNT is produced by the CVD process using the magnesium catalyst. The CNT material has dispersive with mechanical process into the molten AM60 alloy. The mechanical experiment result that hardness is 18% increasing and tensile strength is 13% increasing, better than the raw AM60 alloy on this investigation.

A semi-empirical method to estimate the surface tension of molten alloys at different oxygen partialpressures is suggested in this study. The surface tension of molten Ag-Sn and Ag-Cu alloys were calculatedusing the Butler equation with the surface tension value of pure substance at a given oxygen partialpressure. The oxygen partial pressure ranges were 2.86×10-12－1.24×10-9Pa for the Ag-Sn system and2.27×10-11－5.68×10-4 Pa for the Ag-Cu system. In this calculation, the interactions of the adsorbed oxygenwith other metallic constituents were ignored. The calculated results of the Ag-Sn alloys were in reasonableaccordance with the experimental data within a difference of 8%. For the Ag-Cu alloy system at a higheroxygen partial pressure, the surface tension initially decreased but showed a minimum at XAg = 0.05 to increaseas the silver content increased. This behavior appears to be related to the oxygen adsorption and thecorresponding surface segregation of the constituent with a lower surface tension. Nevertheless, the calculatedresults of the Ag-Cu alloys with the present model were in good agreement with the experimental data withina difference of 10%.