The Department of Energy (DOE), National Energy Technology Center (NETL), has initiated a strategic plan for the development of advanced technologies needed to design and build fossil fuel plants with very high efficiency and environmental performance. These plants, referred to as "Vision 21" by DOE, will produce electricity, chemicals, fuels, or a combination of these products, and possibly secondary products such as steam/heat for industrial use. Certain key components have been indentified as necessary for the success of a Vision 21 power plant, one of which is a high temperature heat exchanger. Thus the DOE has funded a project with the objective being to develop/produce an oxide dispersion strengthened (ODS) heat exchanger tube such that a full scale heat exchanger can be manufactured and the alloy MA956 has been chosen for the material in this study. The major tasks\related to this objective are: (a) increasing the circumferential strength of a MA956 tube, (b) joining of
the MA956 tube, (c) determining the tube bending limits of the MA956 alloy, and (d) determining the high temperature corrosion limits of the MA956 alloy in expected Vision 2 i power plant environments.
Although all of these tasks are critical to the success of this project, this paper will only discuss the strength and corrosion properties of the MA956 alloy and work being performed in these two areas.