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Corrosion behaviour of mild and high carbon steels in
various acidic media
Osarolube, E., Owate, I. O.*
and Oforka, N. C.
Department of Physics/Department of Chemistry, University of
Port Harcourt, Nigeria.
*Corresponding author. E-mail:
owateio@yahoo.com.
Accepted
10 June, 2008. |
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The corrosion behaviour of mild steel and high carbon steel
in various concentrations of nitric acid (HNO3),
hydrochloric acid (HCl), and perchloric acid (HClO4),
has been studied. Specimens were exposed in the acidic media
for seven days and corrosion rates evaluated, using the
weight loss method. It was observed that nitric acid
environment was most corrosive to both steels because of its
oxidizing nature, followed by perchloric acid, and lastly,
hydrochloric acid. The corrodent concentration and
exposure time affected the corrosion of the metals. The
rate of metal dissolution increased with increasing
concentration of the corrosion media and
exposure time. Corrosion rates of mild steel in all the
acidic media studied were found to be higher than that of
high carbon steel. This could be attributed to the fact that
the carbon content in itself has little if any effect on
general corrosion resistance of steels.
Key
words:
Metals, corrosion. |
