High-Temperature Corrosion And Materials Applications George Y. Lai, editor, p3-4 DOI: 10.

1361/hcma2007p003

Copyright 2007 ASM International All rights reserved. www.asminternational.org

CHAPTER 2

Challenges in Materials Applications for High-Temperature Service

IN MANY INDUSTRIAL SYSTEMS, plant operating conditions can be quite complex; it is rather difcult to use laboratory tests to simulate plant conditions. However, laboratory tests can provide good general guidance for making preliminary alloy selection. In situ eld testing or eld trials of candidate alloys in the operating plant provides the best way of obtaining the corrosion information that can be reliably used for nal materials selection. During the preliminary alloy selection process, it is important to evaluate not only the high-temperature corrosion resistance of the alloy, but also its mechanical properties such as tensile and creep-rupture strengths. The microstructural changes at the application temperatures such as thermal stability of the alloy, should also be considered. For example, duplex stainless steels are known to suffer 475 C (885 F) embrittlement caused by the formation of alpha prime (0 ) coherent precipitates. Accordingly, these stainless steels should be avoided for use as a structural component at temperatures approximately, above 340 C (650 F). ASME Codes may have lower maximum service temperature limits for these alloys. Consideration should also be given to fabrication issues, such as weldability and welding procedures, annealing heat treatments, postweld heat treatment (PWHT) and stress relieving, and codes and standards requirements. The availability of the alloy can also be an issue. It is not uncommon to nd that some alloys are no longer commercially available in stock due to a number of reasons, which may include poor market demands in the past, difculty in manufacturing, and so forth. In some cases, the alloy may only be available on order for a whole production heat, which can be tens of thousands of pounds of material. Another important factor is the alloy price. A cost analysis needs to be conducted to balance the material cost with the expected life for the component to ensure the alloy is cost effective. Often the life-cycle cost is a better criterion than the initial material cost in making an alloy selection. Selection of an appropriate ller metal for welding is important for component fabrication involving welding. Normally, it is a simple process when the candidate alloy has a ller metal with matching chemical composition. However, many high-temperature alloys do not have ller metals with matching chemistries. The widely used Fe-Ni-Cr alloy 800H is a good example. Many heat-resistant cast alloys also do not have matching ller metals. Thus, when no matching chemistry ller metal is available for welding, it is critical to select a ller metal that not only possesses excellent weldability but, also exhibits comparable or better high-temperature corrosion resistance along with comparable strengths, thermal stability, and other relevant properties. Some fabricators sometimes use weldability to select a ller metal without considering the resistance of the weld metal to the specic hightemperature corrosive environment in the end application. This can lead to premature failures. For example, because of their good weldability, high nickel ller metals, such as ller metal alloy 82 (ERNiCr-3), are sometimes used for welding the alloys that are to be in service in suldizing environments. This can cause preferential suldation attack at the weld joint because of the relatively poor suldation resistance of high nickel alloys. Welding can still be an issue for some hightemperature alloys even with matching ller metals. This is because some high-temperature alloys contain many alloying elements for various metallurgical reasons, such as improving the resistance to a certain mode of high-temperature

4 / High-Temperature Corrosion and Materials Applications

corrosion, increasing tensile and creep-rupture strengths, or increasing wear resistance. Increasing the levels of some of these alloying elements can increase the difculty in the weldability of the alloy. For example, an alloy containing high silicon, high aluminum, high carbon, or very high chromium can be difcult to weld even though a matching ller metal is available. For construction of a component, engineers have the option to consider whether a wrought alloy or a cast alloy will be more suitable metallurgically and/or economically for the intended high-temperature application. Engineers may also consider a totally different approach to address the high-temperature corrosion issue for some existing plant equipment that has suffered corrosion. In reneries, many reactor vessels, such as crude towers, hydrocrackers, and hydrodesulfurizers, are made of clad plates with a corrosion-resistant cladding in original installations. Cladding can be corroded after years of operation. One common approach is to refurbish the corroded vessels by applying a corrosion-resistant weld overlay instead of replacing it with a new construction. This approach has been adopted in the boiler industry in recent years to address the severe corrosion problems with the waterwalls of boilers in waste-to-energy boilers, coal-red boilers, basic oxygen furnace hoods in steel mills, and so forth. With automatic controls for gas metal arc welding machines, a large scale of weld overlay can be applied in vessels or boilers with engineering quality. Laser cladding can also be applied in the shop on large equipment such as waterwall panels. Coextruded composite tubes with a corrosion-resistant alloy cladding on the outer

diameter have long been available for construction of waterwalls as well as superheaters in boilers. Composite tubes manufactured by a spiral weld overlaying process have been made available in recent years. These composite tubes use the outer diameter cladding for providing corrosion protection and the substrate base tube for the load-bearing structural part. Most of these composite tubes are used in superheaters and reheaters in boilers with metal temperatures being likely less than about 650 C (1200 F). Many furnace tubes used in petrochemical processing, such as ethylene cracking furnace tubes, are exposed to temperatures higher than 980 C (1800 F) and carburizing gas streams on the internal diameter (ID) of the tube, application of composite tubes with a carburization- and coking-resistant alloy cladding on the tube ID can potentially increase the operating temperature and/or prolong the tube life. Aluminide coatings reportedly have been used in ethylene cracking furnace tubes. At the writing of this book, it appears no commercial companies in the United States provide aluminizing coating services for ethylene furnace tubes or pipes. Another diffusion coating, chromized coating, has also reportedly been used in boilers. Both of these diffusion coatings are very thin. Coatings have been highly successful in providing protection against oxidation and hot corrosion for the high-temperature components, such as airfoils, in gas turbines. The coatings used involve aluminide coatings, overlay MCrAlY coatings by vapor deposition processes (e.g., electron beam physical vapor deposition), and ceramic thermal barrier coatings (e.g., stabilized ZrO2). Coatings are considered sacricial and are to be replaced periodically.