A novel system for corrosion protection of reinforced steels in the underwater zone

Abstract

This paper presents a novel system to protect the reinforced steels from corrosion in the underwater zone by removal of the dissolved oxygen. The factors that influence the corrosion processes such as the pH value and the dissolved oxygen concentration were monitored for 48 hours in this system. And the effects of the dissolved oxygen consumption under different output currents and flow rates were compared. Then the corrosion rate of the steels under protection using this system was monitored for 100 hours. At last, a contrastive analysis was conducted between the scanning electron microscope surface morphologies of two bare steel specimens immersed in the underwater zone for 30 days with and without protection. The results showed that the pH value would increase and the dissolved oxygen concentration would decrease in the novel system, which is beneficial to protect the steels. The dissolved oxygen concentration could be reduced to a low value when the output current and the flow rate are appropriate. Steels could be well protected in the system presented in the paper.