Study of electrochemical behavior of galvanized steel sheets covered with paintings exposed to a simulated salt environment

Abstract

There is great importance regarding the protection of metallic materials that are required in the Colombian industry, such as carbon steels. Due to their high demand and use in corrosive environments, constant research is being carried out to improve the properties that are essential for different activities in industry in order to increase the material’s service life; that is corrosion research. With this research, the electrochemical properties of samples supplied by a Colombian company were studied, including galvanized carbon steel sheets which were exposed to a simulated saline environment of 3% by weight NaCl, as well as three sheets of the same material with a polymeric coating of different coloration (Red, Blue and Green) which are verified by means of the FTIR technique with ATR identifying as a polyester-based polymeric coating.

This research work presents the electrochemical behaviors of the samples indicated above during 30 days of immersion using the Electrochemical Impedance Spectroscopy (EIS) technique, achieving an immediate response to the best option for corrosive environments, reaching the conclusion that the he galvanized steel sheets with red and blue polymer coating, respectively, were considered to be optimal for use in marine and coastal industrial environments of the company because they were the samples that were considered an excellent performance against the corrosive attack of the electrolyte and low absorption of Water.