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ABSTRACT
Mild steel is one of the major construction materials, used for pipes and other equipment parts. Mild steel pipes are widely used in oil transportation, and in their ways from oil fields to petroleum refineries passes across different environments and corrode. Coating is one of the methods of corrosion control and epoxy coating represent the most important engineered polymers that drawn attention due to its wide applications including structural materials and anti-corrosion coatings. This research therefore studies the corrosion control using epoxy resin coats on mild steel in seawater and freshwater environment.
The mild steel plate was cut into rectangular sizes of 30mm by 40mm of thickness 5mm. The samples surfaces were treated to get the surfaces clean and ready for coating. The cleaned mild steel samples were coated with the epoxy resin mixture using a drop down method. The coated and uncoated mild steel samples were immersed in the different corrosion media for a duration of six time periods of 15, 30, 45, 60, 75 and 90 days and studied the corrosion rate due to weight loss. Weight of each sample was taken before and after each test period. Weight losses were recorded as reduction in weight of each sample before and after immersion periods and then corrosion rate calculated. pH values of the media were recorded. Protection efficiency of the epoxy coating on the mild steel at each immersion periods was also determined. The Surface morphology and microstructural images of the corroded coated and uncoated mild steel for the immersion periods of 45 and 90 days were captured using scanning electron microscopy (SEM).
The results of the experiment obviously showed that corrosion occurred, because weight losses were evident. But interestingly the rate of corrosion for the various media varied increasingly in the seawater than the freshwater.The epoxy resin coating on the mild steel plate was able to protect it up to an average rate of 92% in fresh water medium compared to the 88.7% in seawater medium. So the epoxy resin coated mild steel plate offered better corrosion resistance in freshwater than in seawater. Conclusively, epoxy resin coating on the mild steel plate improved its anti corrosion performance in freshwater and seawater media.
