Support services for ceramic fiber-ceramic matrix composites. Annual technical progress report

The University of North Dakota Energy and Environmental Research Center (EERC) is providing technical assistance and test materials to the US Department of Energy (DOE) Advanced Research and Technology Development (AR and TD) Materials Program investigating ceramic and advanced alloy corrosion in fossil energy systems. The main activity, which is reported here, is to perform thermochemical equilibrium calculations to develop recommendations for test conditions under which to perform corrosion measurements of structural and particle filter materials. The modeling is primarily being performed to determine possible mechanisms of corrosion, especially by species that vaporize in the gasifier then condense on downstream surfaces. For this year, the focus was on the stability of nickel in structural and filter alloys. This work was done in an effort to explain the existence of nickel-containing condensates found downstream of particulate filters in an EERC pilot-scale coal gasifier which operates under conditions similar to the Pinon Pine system, and to determine possible operating conditions that could reduce the wastage of nickel from structural and filter alloys