On Sun, 13 Feb 2005 18:13:57 -0600, "Tim Williams"
wrote:

"Peter T. Keillor III" wrote in message
.. .
As a 34% solution, I had to use hastelloy or tantalum in my mag meter
electrodes, or the electrodes would dissolve. I once had a power
failure in the mag chloride drying plant I ran, went out and
inspected, and saw mag chloride pouring from a light switch. ALL of
the lighting conduits and circuits had to be replaced. Traced it to
the aforementioned dissolved electrodes in a mag flow meter.

LOL, yipe! Is that corrosion, displacement or what?

Are you sure that **** won't dissolve your crucibles?

Oh, I'm sure it will, but crucibles are disposable by their nature anyway.
So far my SiC has been withstanding ice melter well. The last metal
crucible I was working with got a bad case of aluminum brazed in it
though... salt is a wonderful flux!

FWIW, an "alloy" of 25-30% (by weight) MgCl2, balance KCl, should melt
around 793°F. I'm going to see if that is a workable aluminum
brazing/welding flux...

Tim

Hmmm. Maybe you'll be o.k.

We ran the cells on a eutectic mixture of KCl, NaCl, plus a few
others, with MgCl2 as a minor component. Operating temperature was
~700 deg C. The cell internals were constructed of 99.5+% pure
alumina Coors brick, thousands upon thousands of them, at about
$25-$30 / brick (late '70's dollars). The cell had about 1' - 18"
thick internal walls, and was about 50' long x 30' wide x 7' deep.
The Coors brick held up extremely well as long as it wasn't thermally
shocked. We ran at 200VDC, 18,000 A. That was a fun project,
although damned expensive.

Pete Keillor