Let’s talk about metal corrosion

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This post was last edited by Wang Wei2 on 2024-5-4 08:04. Let’s discuss the issue of metal corrosion – metals including carbon steel, cast iron, stainless steel, non-ferrous metals, and rare metals. Metals possess many excellent properties, such as their electrical conductivity, thermal conductivity, strength, ductility, wear resistance, castability, and other characteristics. Therefore, to this day it remains the most important structural material, being widely used in various aspects of production, daily life, and science and technology. Various metal products suffer from various types of damage during their production and use, such as mechanical wear, biological degradation, corrosion, and so on. What is metal corrosion? The damage or deterioration of metals caused by the effects of the environment is known as metal corrosion. There are other ways of defining metal corrosion. What is the environment? It refers to the substances in contact with metals, such as naturally occurring substances like the atmosphere, soil, seawater, and fresh water, as well as raw materials and materials used in production along with their products. The corrosion of metals is mainly caused by chemical or electrochemical reactions between these substances and the metal; in many cases, physical, mechanical, radiation, electrical current, and biological factors also play a role. It is under these various environmental conditions that metals undergo corrosion. Some metals rusted, some cracked, some became perforated. Some metals showed no signs of rusting, cracking, or perforation at first glance, but they became brittle and deteriorated. When metals undergo chemical or electrochemical changes, the elemental metal is transformed into compounds, resulting in another substance with properties and composition entirely different from those of the original metal, just as wood turns into charcoal or carbon dioxide when burned. Electrochemical reactions are a type of chemical reaction, one that involves the generation of electric current. The corrosion of metals is mostly electrochemical corrosion. The physical dissolution of metal is merely a physical change process; no new substances are formed, only the physical properties change. With the development of certain emerging industrial sectors and the advancement of research on corrosion, some scholars now include the physical dissolution of metals in the definition of metal corrosion, such as the physical dissolution of alloys in liquid metals. Simple mechanical damage and destruction do not fall under metal corrosion. For example, wear, cutting, forging, and crushing are not corrosion. Due to the unrestrained extraction and use of raw materials, the Earth’s finite resources are gradually depleting. At the same time, 1 ton of steel corrodes into rust every 90 seconds worldwide, and the energy required to produce 1 ton of steel is enough to power a household for 3 months. This shows that corrosion is actually a tremendous waste of natural resources. Corrosion-induced damage or fracture not only leads to the leakage of harmful substances and environmental pollution, but sometimes also causes sudden catastrophic accidents that endanger human safety. Therefore, humanity must use science as a weapon to fight against corruption.