Numerical study of corrosion of ferritic/martensitic steels in the flowing PbLi with and without a magnetic field

A computational suite called TRANSMAG has been developed to address corrosion of ferritic/martensitic steels and associated transport of corrosion products in the eutectic alloy PbLi as applied to blankets of a fusion power reactor. The computational approach is based on simultaneous solution of flow, energy and mass transfer equations with or without a magnetic field, assuming mass transfer controlled corrosion and uniform dissolution of iron in the flowing PbLi. First, the new tool is applied to solve an inverse mass transfer problem, where the saturation concentration of iron in PbLi at temperatures up to 550 °C is reconstructed from the experimental data on corrosion in turbulent flows without a magnetic field. As a result, a new correlation for the saturation concentration CS has been obtained in the form CS = e13.604–12975/T, where T is the temperature of PbLi in K and CS is in wppm. Second, the new correlation is used in the computations of corrosion in laminar flows in a rectangular duct in the presence of a strong transverse magnetic field. As shown, the mass loss increases with the magnetic field such that the corrosion rate in the presence of a magnetic field can be a few times higher compared to purely hydrodynamic flows. In addition, the corrosion behavior was found to be different between the side wall of the duct (parallel to the magnetic field) and the Hartmann wall (perpendicular to the magnetic field) due to formation of high-velocity jets at the side walls. The side walls experience a stronger corrosion attack demonstrating a mass loss up to 2–3 times higher compared to the Hartmann walls. Also, computations of the mass loss are performed to characterize the effect of the temperature (400–550 °C) and the flow velocity (0.1–1 m/s) on corrosion in the presence of a strong 5 T magnetic field prototypic to the outboard blanket conditions.