The protective performance of a molten salt frozen wall in the process of fluoride volatility of uranium

The fluoride volatility method (FVM) is a technique tailored to separate uranium from fuel salt of molten salt reactors. A key challenge in R&D of the FVM is corrosion due to the presence of molten salt and corrosive gases at high temperature. In this work, a frozen-wall technique was proposed to produce a physical barrier between construction materials and corrosive reactants. The protective performance of the frozen wall against molten salt was assessed using FLiNaK molten salt with introduced fluorine gas, which was regarded as a simulation of the FVM process. SS304, SS316L, Inconel 600 and graphite were chosen as the test samples. The extent of corrosion was characterized by an analysis of weight loss and scanning electron microscope studies. All four test samples suffered severe corrosion in the molten salt phase with the corrosion resistance as: Inconel 600 > SS316L > graphite > SS304. The presence of the frozen wall could protect materials against corrosion by molten salt and corrosive gases, and compared with materials exposed to molten salt, the corrosion rates of materials protected by the frozen wall were decreased by at least one order of magnitude.