Advanced Low-Cost Aluminized Coatings for Metal Combustors

Biomass is a unique renewable energy resource that can be converted to power, carbon-based fuels, or chemicals. However, bioenergy generation using biomass introduces a number of aggressive species such as alkali halide salts into process environments, resulting in accelerated degradation of combustor components. To achieve cost effective production of bioenergy and bioproducts, a low cost protective coating technology for biomass combustors/reactors will be developed to allow the use of low cost metal components at elevated temperatures and pressures with excellent corrosion resistance. This project will develop a versatile and low cost process to fabricate a uniform and dense aluminized coating on metallic substrates. The coating materials will be formulated to achieve high densification at low processing temperature and durable bonding between the coating and substrate. The coated substrates will be to be studied to evaluate the effectiveness of the aluminized coating to mitigate corrosion at evaluated temperatures. The successful commercialization of the proposed aluminized coating technology will help reduce the cost of damages due to metal corrosion, especially in high temperature and corrosive applications such as bioenergy and high efficiency power plants.