Quarterly report discussing fuel cell research and development work at Argonne National Laboratory (ANL). This report describes efforts directed toward (1) improving understanding of component behavior in molten carbonate fuel cells and (2) developing alternative materials and concepts for components. The principal focus was changed during this period from the development of cathodes fabricated from NiO and electrolyte supports of sintered y-LiA102 to an investigation of NiO cathode dissolution and deposition and a search for alternative cathode materials.

As part of the Solar Reliability and Materials Program at Argonne National Laboratory, the atmospheric corrosion of candidate batten and enclosure materials were tested on outdoor racks parallel to the tilted solar-collected panels at nine National Solar Data Network (NSDN) sites, located in mild marine, mild industrial, and rural environments. The candidate materials evaluated include galvanized steel (G-90), aluminized steel (Type 2), aluminum (6061), and white polyester painted steel. Data analyses predicted that all the first three materials will last more than 20 years in the nine sites tested. However, repainting of the painted steel is probably needed within five years in a mild marine environment and five to ten years in a mild industrial or rural environment.

As part of the Solar Reliability and Materials Program at Argonne National Laboratory, metal corrosion associated with thermal cycling at 82 C circulating and 176 C stagnating temperatures of propylene glycol and ASTM corrosive water mixture (50% v/o) was investigated. Preliminary data indicate that in a mixed metal system of copper, steel, and aluminum specimens stagnating together in a glycol solution, the copper randomly pits and the pitting stops when the pit depth extends to about 1-1/2 mil. The addition of 1% molybdate as an inhibitor to the glycol solution is slightly beneficial for steel, but the added expense of adding and maintaining the concentration of an inhibitor may not be warranted. Dissolved copper rapidly deposits on the aluminum surface and promotes severe galvanic corrosion.

This report describes the current state of the utility subroutine package used with codes being developed by the staff of the Applied Physics Division. The package provides a variety of useful functions for BCD input processing, dynamic core-storage allocation and management, binary I/O and data manipulation. The routines were written to conform to coding standards which facilitate the exchange of programs between different computers.