Molten Salt Corrosion (MSR) Lab
In this laboratory, we are working to understand the corrosion in high temperature molten fluoride salts to support the development of next generation molten salt cooled nuclear reactors. The corrosion in a molten fluoride salts is heavily dependent on impurities like oxygen and moisture in the environment so all of our work is performed inside of gloveboxes, like the one shown in Fig.1. These gloveboxes maintain an ultra-high purity argon atmosphere where oxygen concentrations are maintained below 5 ppm and moisture concentrations are below 1 ppm.
Most of our gloveboxes are also custom designed for performing long term corrosion experiments without taking up excess space in the interior of the glovebox. To do this, the gloveboxes have corrosion wells that come off of the bottom which are heated using exterior heaters that are controlled using a custom LabVIEW program. A lifting assembly is attached to the well lid which allows us to raise and lower samples into the well. With this setup in our glovebox, we can perform long term corrosion experiments at high temperature and still perform additional work in the glovebox.
