ANALYSIS OF OXIDE SCALES ON OXIDISED AISI 441 FERRITIC STAINLESS STEEL CATALYST SUPPORT BY SCANNING ELECTRON MICROSCOPY

摘要

Stainless steel EN 1.4509 is the most common ferritic stainless steel used for exhaust gas and energy conversion systems owing to their high resistance to hot corrosion, thermal properties, high temperature service, excellent mechanical properties and no dependence to nickel price [1]. These characteristics makes this stainless steel a good choice as a support for the active phase. In the field of catalysis, stainless steel substrates are exposed to an oxidation pre-treatment at high temperature, promoting oxide scale growth at the surface, which enhance the catalyst deposition [2]. Considering this, oxide scales were analysed by different characterisation techniques such as backscattered (BSE) and secondary (SE) electron detectors and energy-dispersive X-ray spectrometry (EDS) detector, in order to analyse the oxide scales.