Effect of sea water on some metals (Iron - Copper - Aluminium)

Abstract

Corrosion is one of the problems that occur to engineering and industrial facilities, especially to some parts of machines and equipment after their manufacture and when used, as a result of exposure of the metal to the corrosive medium. The most important metals that are exposed to this problem are iron, copper and aluminium. Therefore, these metals most used in industry were approved to be the subject of the study, namely (iron, copper, aluminum). Samples of these metals were taken and prepared using cutting, grinding and cleaning. The corrosive medium used in this research was sea water. The exposure time to sea water was determined as 30,60,90 and 120 days. The lost weight method was used to find out the rates of corrosion. In this study, it was found that the annual corrosion rate of sea water for the selected metals is that the highest corrosion rate was in iron metal, followed by copper and then aluminium, and the corrosion increases with increasing of exposure time. The tested samples were cylindrical in shape. They were put inside containers of volume 250 mm3 filled with sea water. Some laboratory equipment such as a sensitive scale and beaker were used.