What is corrosion?
The word corrode is derived from the Latin “corrodere, ” meaning “to gnaw to pieces.” The general definition of corroding is to eat into or wear away gradually, as if by gnawing. It is a natural process that converts a refined metal into a more chemically stable form such as oxide, hydroxide, or sulfide. It is the gradual destruction of materials by chemical and electrochemical reactions with their environment.
Why take corrosion seriously?
Every year lakhs of crores of Rupees are lost because of corrosion, wear, and tear. The Ministry of Statistics and Programme Implementation (MOSPI) prepares the estimates of consumption of fixed capital (CFC) which also includes the effect of wear and tear, on capital goods.
It is estimated that around 4.2 Lakh crore of loss in manufacturing and IT industries occurs due to CFC. It is paramount to compute these losses as it helps calculate depreciation and affects tax assessment and business accounting. India’s GDP is also calculated by taking into account the consumption of fixed capital. The gross domestic product is the CFC subtracted from the net domestic product. Every year the respective industries generate a new need for capital investments. Thus making a dent in their businesses.
Corrosion audits
Corrosion auditing is a systematic approach to investigating the worthiness of corrosion control techniques and suggesting suitable economic methods to control corrosion. It is inspecting the corrosion sites, analyzing the reasons for corrosion, suggesting methods of prevention, and doing a cost analysis of prevention and losses due to corrosion. Recognizing corrosion’s economic and safety impact, organizations such as NACE (National Association of Corrosion Engineers) are working towards moving to legislation for mandatory corrosion audits in India. ISA (International Society for Automation) has set up classification guidelines (ISA 71.04-2013) to determine the corrosive potential of an environment towards electronics.
How to perform a corrosion audit?
Although corrosion audits are quite expensive since consultants follow a detailed approach and cover a broader area, there are simpler ways to perform a corrosion audit in critical areas such as data centers, control rooms, server rooms, and so on. Purafil’s CCC (Corrosion Classification Coupons) can be used to get a comprehensive corrosivity report of your facility which will identify the contaminant class in the air and also the environmental classification (G1, G2, G3 or Gx) as per ISA 71.04-2013. All it takes is to expose the coupons to the Data center and/or Control center area for 30 days. The India partner Ripple Effect, helps the client deliver these coupons to the Purafil lab for a detailed investigation of the contaminant class. An example of the corrosion film composition and the projections of corrosion (in Angstroms) is given below. Appropriate solutions such as chemical media and filters from Purafl are suggested to mitigate such issues and render the severity level of the facility to G1. A simple corrosion coupon study can help industries save the cost of millions. Follow us for more interesting facts.