Chemical Process and Corrosion Laboratory

Perhaps the most advanced and sophisticated of DEI's facilities is the chemical process and corrosion lab. It includes two state-of-the-art glass autoclave facilities capable of simulating corrosion, chemical cleaning, and decontamination processes for the nuclear industry and providing visual and data acquisition monitoring for the processes. These facilities have been used for essentially all independent testing of pressurized water reactor steam generator chemical cleaning processes throughout the world since 1997.

Our corrosion test facilities include high-pressure autoclaves and on-line corrosion monitoring systems capable of ECN, LPR, ZRA and AC impedance corrosion monitoring.

The facilities are instrumented with on-line systems for pH, temperature, pressures, flows and electrochemical potential. The process laboratory also includes thermal-hydraulic test loops used to study single-phase and boiling heat transfer, especially through porous deposit layers. Heat fluxes in excess of those experienced in nuclear steam generators can be simulated.