Periodic Reporting for period 4 - TAMING CORROSION (Towards mastering the long-standing challenge of ageing infrastructures in corrosive environments)
Reporting period: 2024-07-01 to 2024-12-31
The socio-economic burden of replacing and repairing infrastructures due to corrosion is staggering. In the EU alone, estimates are in the range of 250 billion € annually, with an expected steep increase over the coming decades. This urgently calls for new, cost-effective corrosion mitigation strategies to prolong the useful life of ageing civil infrastructures. Electrochemical corrosion protection methods have a large potential to play a key role in addressing this challenge. However, to match these expectations, advances are needed in both science and engineering. The aim of this proposal was to develop the scientific basis to enhance (electrochemical) corrosion protection to tackle the grand challenge of rapidly deteriorating infrastructures. The objective was to study and integrate all relevant physical, chemical, and electrochemical processes into a holistic approach, enabling predictive models.
The project investigated reactive transport and steel corrosion, focusing on processes at the steel/porous medium interface. Work involved extensive experimental characterization, including advanced techniques like synchrotron and photo-electrochemistry, to understand electrolyte chemistry, metal surface states, and iron speciation and iron corrosion product transformations. This included the development of comprehensive experimental datasets, such as through quantification and characterisation of the temporo-spatial distribution of various species in the steel-porous medium interfacial zone, which provided novel insight into the underlying (electro-)chemical processes as well as serve as basis for the validation of numerical modelling approaches. Another highlight ist the development of a novel numerical solver for geochemical modeling, capable of managing thermodynamic equilibria involving various oxidation states simultaneously.
Key results include novel fundamental insights into the various interfacial processes, which were disseminated as publications in scientific journals. Furthermore guidance on ER-probes for corrosion monitoring was published, primarily for a practical engineering audience. Another deliverable worth mentioning is an open-source tool for engineering as well as the academic community, namely a Python package for potential-pH diagrams.
Key results include novel fundamental insights into the various interfacial processes, which were disseminated as publications in scientific journals. Furthermore guidance on ER-probes for corrosion monitoring was published, primarily for a practical engineering audience. Another deliverable worth mentioning is an open-source tool for engineering as well as the academic community, namely a Python package for potential-pH diagrams.
The impact of this project can be found mainly in contributing to establishing a scientific basis for corrosion and corrosion protection of steel in reactive porous media. A novelty is the coupling of reactive multi-species and moisture transport in porous media with rigorous corrosion science/electrochemistry, which was achieved through both modelling approaches as well as experimental validation and quantification. This development is seen as an important scientific milestone for establishing future engineering approaches. Accordingly, the technological benefit of this work can be found in paving the way towards a new generation of scientifically sound engineering tools of (electrochemical) corrosion protection and predictive models.