Corrosion Control

Abstract

At first sight it may be surprising to find a chapter on corrosion in a book on industrial electrochemistry. Corrosion is, however, essentially an electrochemical phenomenon and the importance to society of its control needs little emphasis; wherever metals are used, for example in cars, for household goods, in building, in oil rigs or in chemical plant, corrosion must be considered and is likely to determine the useful life of the component. More importantly though, based on an understanding of the electrochemical mechanism of corrosion, it is possible to devise methods which decrease its rate — stopping corrosion completely is an unreachable goal. Hence this chapter will first discuss the mechanism of corrosion and then describe some electrochemical methods for corrosion control which are widely used.