Corrosion is Everywhere It destroys valuable infrastructure and costs billions. However, not only well-known metals corrode: new composite materials and thin-film technologies raise new questions. Empa finds answers.
"Corrosion" comes from Latin "corrodere": to gnaw something to pieces. This refers to the gradual destruction of a substance due to the influence of other substances in the environment. Specialists at Empa take a close look at such processes and can find timely ways to prevent material failure due to corrosion - long before disasters such as those in Genoa occur. The owner of a new Swiss industrial facility for the production of high-tech machinery was faced with a mystery: Kilometres of brand new stainless steel and aluminium pressure and cooling lines, worth several hundred thousand Swiss francs began to corrode while still under construction. What had attacked the metals so quickly? Empa experts took a close look at the entire system: Were corrosive building materials involved, were cleaning agents to blame or had the wrong materials simply been selected? Finally, they found the "culprit" in form of a small bottle on a workshop truck: Instead of using a professional leak tester, the assembly team had used a universal cleaning agent from the supermarket to locate leaks with the foam. But the supermarket agent contained acids and chlorides that corroded the metals. New scene: The caretaker of a school in eastern Switzerland notices corrosion on the ceiling lamp fixtures in the gymnasium during cleaning work during the 2019 spring holidays.
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