Oxidation Driven Permeation of Iron Oxide Scales by Chloride from Experiment Guided First-Principles Modeling

Journal article, 2019

In this comprehensive investigation, it is demonstrated how chloride ions may permeate a crack-free oxide scale, thus providing hitherto missing mechanistic insight as to the impacts of KCl(s) or HCl(g) exposures on the high-temperature corrosion of biomass- and waste-fired boilers. Guided by dedicated experimental analyses, mechanistic understanding is gained by means of density functional theory. Chloride ions, being accommodated in oxygen anion vacancies that are generated at the receding magnetite/alloy interface, are driven through the oxide scale by the oxidation process. Intermediate stabilities of quasi-homogeneous transient iron oxychloride species are found, employing potassium ferrite and goethite as complementary cation sinks for the KCl(s) and HCl(g) reactants, respectively. Spontaneous disproportionation of the supersaturated oxychlorides into two different types of chloride decorated magnetite grain boundaries is demonstrated. These motifs are proposed to explain loss of scale integrity as well as accelerated oxidation by offering short-circuiting transient pathways for ion diffusion.