Effect of temperature on the corrosion inhibition of iron in liquid lead using oxygen inhibitor: studied by MD simulation

For corrosion mitigation of steels used in a fast nuclear reactor power plant, oxygen gas is one of promising candidates of inhibitors. Many experiments have been conducted to reveal the mechanism of corrosion and mechanism of how to overcome the corrosion. In the previous work, we had shown computationally that the oxygen atom can be used to reduce the corrosion and we had predicted the oxygen contents. In the current work, not only to explore deeeper the ability of oxygen gas to reduce the corrosion, but also to include the variation of used temperature. We still used iron material to represent a real steels. Using MD (molecular dynamics) simulation based on the Lennard-Jones interaction potential, we sought to understand the concentration of oxygen gas as variation of temperature used in the reactor for the best corrosion mitigation. From this work, we conclude that the temperature does not give effect in related with how concentration of injected oxygen. The temparature merely affects to rise the diffusion coefficient of iron in liquid lead, yet it does not influence how much oxygen needed for corrosion mitigation. In this work, all simulations on different series of temperatures (1023^°K, 1073^°K, 1123^°K, 1173^°K) reveals that oxygen content of 0.1151wt% will cause the lowest corrosion level of iron in liquid lead.