Determination of Cr in carbon steel of outlet headers

Flow-accelerated corrosion (FAC) is a pipe degradation process that is a chemical corrosion accelerated by flowing water or a water steam mixture in pressure vessels of fossil and nuclear power plants. It is known that even lower amounts of chromium (as low as 0.1%) in carbon steel may significantly reduce the FAC rates. Therefore, the contents of chromium in used piping systems made from low alloy steel must be known for an evaluation for reusing pressure vessels. In this study, we examined a method of a sample preparation for a chromium determination using a file, and the determinations of chromium in used outlet headers of nuclear power plants were carried out by a inductively coupled plasma atomic emission spectrometry (ICP-AES) for an evaluation of the FAC