"Peter T. Keillor III" wrote in message
...
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.

Nice. What'd it make? Sodium or potassium?
That's another thing I'm looking into doing some day (and yes I'm aware of
the dangers of highly reative metals, and I've seen Theodore Gray's sodium
party webpage, not that it was a deterrent! )

I'm guessing silica has solubility in the salt, hence you can't use normal
acid firebrick?

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.

Sounds like it!

Tim

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