Christine Geers

I started to work as postdoctoral research fellow in the department of Energy and Materials in April 2013. The main focus is to setup experiments for highly corrosive environments at high temperature for the evaluation of high performance alloys. The temperature ranges from 600 to 1100˚C. The gas environments I am working with can be defined as high pO2-environments, meaning that the oxygen partial pressure is sufficiently high to oxidize most metal species in alloys, and low pO2-environments with very low oxygen activities. In both regimes, other species than oxygen can participate or dominate the corrosion attack such as sulfur dioxide, hydrochloride, carbon mono- and dioxide, methane, water vapor and even nitrogen at high temperatures. These are the species which are used for alloy investigations in the labs I am working in.
The alloys of specific interest at the moment are FeCrAl alloys. These alloys have a high potential for all sorts of applications since they contain high amounts of aluminum which forms one of the most stable oxides for steel protection. However, a thorough investigation has to be conducted to define lifetime expectations and corrosion mechanisms.
My qualification for this position originates from my PhD thesis subject which was the investigation of new coating materials against metal dusting corrosion attack. Metal dusting is a high temperature corrosion phenomenon occurring under severe carburizing conditions such as syngas from a reformer for example, that consists of hydrogen and carbon monoxide. My PhD was part of my job as scientific co-worker at DECHEMA-Forschungsinstitut in Frankfurt, Germany (2007-2013). During this time I extended my training by material science.
My studies at University of Rostock, Germany, were chemistry with a focus on solid state chemistry.