High-Temperature Oxidation of AISI441 Ferritic Stainless Steel for Solid Oxide Fuel Cells

Abstract

Several ferritic stainless steel grades are widely studied and used in solid oxide fuel cells (SOFCs) technology as interconnect materials. Their high-temperature oxidation behavior is interesting to evaluate their applicability at SOFCs operating conditions and to design degradation tests and models predicting the lifetime of a SOFC stack. In this work the AISI441 grade was oxidized in static air at 850°C to study its oxidation kinetic by weight gain measurements. It was found a parabolic growth with a rate constant of 9.42 x 10-14 g2cm-4s-1. Data calculated using the diffusion coefficients of the species involved in the oxidation process resulted in higher weight gain. Discrepancies between the measurements and the model were corrected taking into account the chromium volatilization.