Corrosion of Stainless Steel in Simulated Solid Oxide Fuel Cell Interconnect Environments

Morphology and phase composition of the scales formed on 316L stainless steel in an environment simulating a solid oxide fuel cell (SOFC) interconnect were determined towards the corrosion behavior study of commercial and new alloys for SOFC stack and balance-of-plant (BOP) applications. The simulated SOFC environment consisted of a dual exposure condition with air on one side of the specimen and mixtures of hydrogen and water vapor on the other side at 907 degrees K. Surface characterization techniques, such as optical and scanning electron microscopy, energy dispersive X-ray spectroscopy as well as X-ray diffraction analysis were used in this study. Also, an attempt was made to correlate the experimental results with thermodynamic calculations.