Dr Amin Hoell of the HMI in Berlin and I working on beamline 7T-MPW-SAXS at BESSY during 2006.
I conducted my PhD thesis on the commercial problem of glass contact refractory corrosion. In commercial float lines, there exists a triple junction between the glass melt, the sidewall refractories and the atmosphere. At this point there is a high rate of sidewall corrosion, which leads to unwanted particles ending up in the glass (very unwanted in terms of quality) and also the need for a cold repair of the furnace (very costly). In order to study this problem, I created a model refractory analogue, based on a similar chemical make up (alumina-zirconia phases bonded by a silicate matrix) however, in order to increase the reaction rates (the corrosion) I chose to use alumina and zirconia nanoparticles. The techniques I used was Nuclear Magnetic Resonance Spectroscopy (NMR) and Small-Angle X-ray Scattering (SAXS), in particular an advanced form of SAXS known as Anomalous SAXS (ASAXS) which provides an element specific contrast in the scattering patterns.
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