Development of Diffusion Coatings to Optimise the High Temperature Corrosion Resistance of Fuel Cell Reformer Materials

Abstract

Reformer materials are exposed to severe operating conditions at high temperature in aggressive catalyzer and combustion atmospheres. Therefore, materials used for the construction of the reformer reactor have to possess appropriate high temperature resistance. Diffusion coatings improve the high temperature resistance of materials by enrichment of the alloy surface with thermodynamically stable oxide formers. Beside conventional mono-element diffusion coatings (e.g. Al coating), multi-element diffusion coatings can be developed in a single process step. In this work we developed Al diffusion and Al-Si and Al-Si-RE (RE: reactive element Y, Ce) co-diffusion coatings on a low cost austenitic 18Cr10Ni-steel. The high temperature resistance of coated and uncoated 18Cr10Ni-steel, 20Cr31Ni-steel and 23Cr18Fe-Ni base alloy was tested in catalyzer and combustion atmosphere under cyclic operation conditions.