In Municipal Waste Incinerators (MWI) considerable corrosion problems of critical components, such as superheater or boiler tubes, are frequently reported. Especially in modern WTE plants the need for efficiency increase requires operation at higher temperatures, which in turn enhances the corrosion rates.

Laser cladding technology has been successfully used for the production of anticorrosion and antierosion coatings on superheater and boilers tubes. Compared to protective coatings produced by flame spraying devices, laser cladding is virtually porosity free and ensures metallurgical bonding to the substrate, so that the clad tubes can be bent without any damage from cracking or spalling. This is absolutely necessary for the construction of the bends of the superheater coils and opens the door to the production of integral laser clad superheater assemblies.

Due to the very low thermal load of the process, if compared to usual MIG welding, laser cladding coatings have very low iron content (2 - 3%) even if laid in a single pass, with thickness in the range 0.7 -1.0 mm. Therefore the laser technology allows to produce high quality coatings with a considerable saving in feeding materials, whereas conventional MIG welding requires a 2.5 - 3 mm thick cladding to obtain the same iron content as a single pass laser cladding.

In this paper the advantages of this new technology are presented in detail, as well as CESI RICERCA automatic diode laser workstation facility available for industrial production of MWI superheater and boiler clad tubes.