The Development of a Stable and Practical Saturated Reference Electrode for Molten Chloride Salt Systems

A simply constructed, stable, Ni/Ni2+ saturated reference electrode (SRE) has potential to measure thermodynamic behavior of molten chloride salts more reliably. Like the Ag/Ag+ reference electrode (RE), the Ni/Ni2+ SRE is made of commercially available materials. Initial experiments in molten CaCl2 and LiCl show the Ag/Ag+ RE potential drifting two times faster than the SRE. Furthermore, experiments show the replicability of SREs by comparing two Ni/Ni2+ SREs with different compositions of NiCl2 which is supportive of saturated phase behavior.