skip to main content
OSTI.GOV title logo U.S. Department of Energy
Office of Scientific and Technical Information

Title: HIGH-PERFORMANCE COATING MATERIALS

Abstract

Corrosion, erosion, oxidation, and fouling by scale deposits impose critical issues in selecting the metal components used at geothermal power plants operating at brine temperatures up to 300 C. Replacing these components is very costly and time consuming. Currently, components made of titanium alloy and stainless steel commonly are employed for dealing with these problems. However, another major consideration in using these metals is not only that they are considerably more expensive than carbon steel, but also the susceptibility of corrosion-preventing passive oxide layers that develop on their outermost surface sites to reactions with brine-induced scales, such as silicate, silica, and calcite. Such reactions lead to the formation of strong interfacial bonds between the scales and oxide layers, causing the accumulation of multiple layers of scales, and the impairment of the plant component's function and efficacy; furthermore, a substantial amount of time is entailed in removing them. This cleaning operation essential for reusing the components is one of the factors causing the increase in the plant's maintenance costs. If inexpensive carbon steel components could be coated and lined with cost-effective high-hydrothermal temperature stable, anti-corrosion, -oxidation, and -fouling materials, this would improve the power plant's economic factors by engendering a considerablemore » reduction in capital investment, and a decrease in the costs of operations and maintenance through optimized maintenance schedules.« less

Authors:
Publication Date:
Research Org.:
Brookhaven National Lab. (BNL), Upton, NY (United States)
Sponsoring Org.:
Doe - Office Of Science
OSTI Identifier:
909954
Report Number(s):
BNL-77900-2007-IR
R&D Project: 05171; EB4005030; TRN: US200723%%297
DOE Contract Number:
DE-AC02-98CH10886
Resource Type:
Technical Report
Country of Publication:
United States
Language:
English
Subject:
36 MATERIALS SCIENCE; 15 GEOTHERMAL ENERGY; BRINES; CALCITE; CAPITAL; CARBON STEELS; CLEANING; COATINGS; CORROSION; ECONOMICS; GEOTHERMAL POWER PLANTS; MAINTENANCE; OXIDATION; SCHEDULES; SILICA; STAINLESS STEELS; TITANIUM ALLOYS

Citation Formats

SUGAMA,T. HIGH-PERFORMANCE COATING MATERIALS. United States: N. p., 2007. Web. doi:10.2172/909954.
Copy to clipboard
SUGAMA,T. HIGH-PERFORMANCE COATING MATERIALS. United States. doi:10.2172/909954.
Copy to clipboard
SUGAMA,T. Mon . "HIGH-PERFORMANCE COATING MATERIALS". United States. doi:10.2172/909954. https://www.osti.gov/servlets/purl/909954.
Copy to clipboard
@article{osti_909954,
title = {HIGH-PERFORMANCE COATING MATERIALS},
author = {SUGAMA,T.},
abstractNote = {Corrosion, erosion, oxidation, and fouling by scale deposits impose critical issues in selecting the metal components used at geothermal power plants operating at brine temperatures up to 300 C. Replacing these components is very costly and time consuming. Currently, components made of titanium alloy and stainless steel commonly are employed for dealing with these problems. However, another major consideration in using these metals is not only that they are considerably more expensive than carbon steel, but also the susceptibility of corrosion-preventing passive oxide layers that develop on their outermost surface sites to reactions with brine-induced scales, such as silicate, silica, and calcite. Such reactions lead to the formation of strong interfacial bonds between the scales and oxide layers, causing the accumulation of multiple layers of scales, and the impairment of the plant component's function and efficacy; furthermore, a substantial amount of time is entailed in removing them. This cleaning operation essential for reusing the components is one of the factors causing the increase in the plant's maintenance costs. If inexpensive carbon steel components could be coated and lined with cost-effective high-hydrothermal temperature stable, anti-corrosion, -oxidation, and -fouling materials, this would improve the power plant's economic factors by engendering a considerable reduction in capital investment, and a decrease in the costs of operations and maintenance through optimized maintenance schedules.},
doi = {10.2172/909954},
journal = {},
number = ,
volume = ,
place = {United States},
year = {Mon Jan 01 00:00:00 EST 2007},
month = {Mon Jan 01 00:00:00 EST 2007}
}
Copy to clipboard
Technical Report:
View Technical Report
DOI:  10.2172/909954
Save / Share:
Export Metadata
Save to My Library
You must Sign In or Create an Account in order to save documents to your library.

  • ; ;
    Laser and IR lamp based synthesis and oxidation/corrosion evaluation of Fe-Al coatings.

  • ; ;
    In the pulp and paper industry, weak black liquor concentration is carried out using energy intensive evaporators. Briefly, after wood digestion, water is evaporated to concentrate weak black liquor to the point where the black liquor can be burned in a recovery boiler, which ultimately leads to the recovery of digestion chemicals. Because it is less energy intensive than heat-driven separation, pressure-driven separation of water from black liquor using membranes could reduce the energy usage by 55 trillion Btu yr-1 and carbon dioxide emissions by more than 11 million metric tons CO2 per year if the first two evaporators aremore » replaced. However, weak black liquor is a hot, corrosive, and highly fouling feed with organic molecules, colloids, and ions that clog membranes within hours of operation. We have shown that membrane-based concentration of weak black liquor is feasible, but only with our antifouling and anti-clogging technology that is based on a sacrificial Bio-inspired Living Skin concept. This concept is based on a conformal coating that is formed at the membrane surface and within the pores. Weak foulant adhesion dramatically decreases membrane fouling while the superhydrophilicity of the coating increases the water permeability. Moreover, the coating can be completely removed during backflushing, which removes foulants that may irreversibly adhere to the coating over long periods of time. The skin shedding completely regenerates the membrane surface and pores, restoring the original flux. This is followed by in-situ recoating, using the existing membrane plumbing and pumps, which essentially creates a brand new membrane surface. Our coatings resist fouling under hot weak black liquor concentration conditions and can be regenerated in-situ on demand. Weak black liquor permeate flux as well as Fourier-transform infrared spectroscopy results suggest that black liquor foulants adhere very weakly to coated membrane surfaces. We modified the coating process to control the deposition time, which allows us to deposit the coating on large-scale membranes. We tuned the coating chemistry by introducing positive or negative charges to reject divalent ions present in weak black liquor permeate. Therefore, our two-stage membrane system effectively separates high molecular weight organics from weak black liquor using ultrafiltration membranes (Stage 1) and low molecular weight organic molecules and divalent salts from weak black liquor permeate using nanofiltration membranes (Stage 2), while the coating maintains the permeate flux by mitigating fouling. Coated polymeric ultrafiltration membranes have exhibited up to two-fold increase in permeate flux due to substantially lower fouling when concentrating weak black liquor at 85 °C. Coated tubular ceramic membranes show no observable fouling over a period of 72 hours, compared to uncoated membranes that exhibit a 20% drop in flux in less than 3 hours. Beyond 20% permeate recovery, however, the fouling rate for coated and uncoated membranes approached -0.4 LMH/h due to cake-layer formation. This fouling has been shown to be reversible only with coated membranes; uncoated membranes undergo irreversible fouling and the flux only recovers after chemical cleaning. Continuous surface renewal has been demonstrated using coated membranes that have been stripped and recoated with no loss in performance. Coated Stage 2 membranes exhibit increased sodium sulfate and sodium hydroxide rejection over uncoated membranes. Membranes that are coated with the negatively and positively charged coating exhibit a 7% and 10% increase in sulfate rejection, respectively, over uncoated membranes. Total organic carbon and sodium sulfate analyses of the final Stage 2 permeate and samples from WestRock pulp washers indicate that the permeate may be introduced to the pulp-washing cycle at the first or second washer closest to the digester. Coated Stage 1 membranes exhibit an average permeate flux of 4.2 LMH/bar when concentrating weak black liquor at 85 °C from 0 to 70% permeate recovery at a transmembrane pressure of 60 psi. Coated Stage 2 membranes exhibit an average permeate flux of 1.6 LMH/bar when concentrating weak black liquor permeate (from Stage 1) at 70 °C from 0 to 70% permeate recovery at a transmembrane pressure of 400 psi. Although the fouling resistance of the coated membranes was impeccable, the Stage 1 permeate flux during the WestRock demonstration was only 0.77 LMH/bar. Based on the results of the demonstration, the calculated annualized capital, operational, and maintenance cost is $8.0M, making the process economically unfeasible. Unfortunately, we ran out of time and resources and we were forced to use an unoptimized coating during the trial. To perform as it has previously, the coating requires a series of conditioning steps that vary with each system geometry. If we tune the conditioning steps to the scaled-up system, then the Stage 1 membrane would perform as it has over the life of the program and the annualized capital, operational, and maintenance cost for Stage 1 would be $2.0M and the payback period for the complete system would be 2.8 years.« less

  • The University of California San Diego is one of the 2012 SunShot CSP R&D awardees for their advanced receivers. This fact sheet explains the motivation, description, and impact of the project.

  • Sunlight absorbing coating is a key enabling technology to achieve high-temperature high-efficiency concentrating solar power operation. A high-performance solar absorbing material must simultaneously meet all the following three stringent requirements: high thermal efficiency (usually measured by figure of merit), high-temperature durability, and oxidation resistance. The objective of this research is to employ a highly scalable process to fabricate and coat black oxide nanoparticles onto solar absorber surface to achieve ultra-high thermal efficiency. Black oxide nanoparticles have been synthesized using a facile process and coated onto absorber metal surface. The material composition, size distribution and morphology of the nanoparticle are guidedmore » by numeric modeling. Optical and thermal properties have been both modeled and measured. High temperature durability has been achieved by using nanocomposites and high temperature annealing. Mechanical durability on thermal cycling have also been investigated and optimized. This technology is promising for commercial applications in next-generation high-temperature concentration solar power (CSP) plants.« less