Liquid sodium corrosion of various iron-base alloys depends on several factors, one of which is the flow velocity of the liquid metal.1 Therefore, this reaction should be partially diffusion rate limited. Hopenfeld and Darley2 have made an effort to describe the driving force of the solution of solid metals in liquid sodium in terms of the difference between the saturation solubility at the boundary layer on the solid liquid interface and the bulk concentration of corrosion products in sodium, but this model for sodium corrosion of stainless steels does not agree with certain experimental results. The corrosion rate of stainless steel specimens does not correspond to the analytically measured saturation concentrations of iron in sodium as determined by Singer and Weeks3 and Eichelberger and McKisson.4 This was also shown by calculations of the influence of saturation effects on the “downstream” behavior in corrosion loops.5
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