Thanks to Jay, my older son, for calling my attention to this fine article.
Dr. Mars Fontana was properly considered one of the foremost corrosion experts in the world with LaQue of France. Denison granted me the privilege of attending his corrosion course at Ohio State. Dr. Fontana was a great and humble gentleman who had remarkable abilities in seeing through the chaffe and obtaining the wheat. He granted me an A (he had a reputation of giving all his OSU metallurgy students A's in the course). Dr. Beck was Dr. Fontana's sidekick, who became a cherished friend of mine and I interviewed him for his story in my book "Acquaintances With Integrity". Both Dr. Fonatana and Dr. Beck are now deceased.
Rust never sleeps
Preventing corrosion, replacing metal costs $400 billion a year
Sunday, May 24, 2009 3:34 AM
By Kevin Mayhood
THE COLUMBUS DISPATCH
ERIC ALBRECHT | DISPATCH
Neil Thompson of Dublin-based DNV, the country's largest private corrosion lab, looks for ways to thwart rust.
Jeff Hinckley | DISPATCH
State inspectors Matt Beedy, left, and Mike Brokaw check out a bridge on Rt. 315 over 3rd Avenue.
Click here to enlarge
Rusted, busted and hard to maintain
• Ohio maintains 14,000 bridges.
It would cost
$4.2 billion to repair all of the corrosion on them. Franklin County maintains 362 bridges.
• Columbus maintains 4,000 miles of water lines in the city and suburbs. Every year, the city fixes 500 to 600 breaks.
• Statewide, there are 7,670 miles of natural gas transmission lines
and 54,000 miles of distri-
bution lines.
• Columbia Gas
maintains 19,161 miles of natural-gas pipes
in 60 counties. The company estimates
that 4,000 miles of pipes are made of
steel or cast iron.
• The U.S. military spends $20 billion
to $30 billion annually fighting rust on ships, planes and other machines.
Sources: Columbia Gas, various government agencies
Rusted, busted and hard to maintain Rust doesn't differentiate between a swing set, a jumbo jet or a bridge that carries thousands of commuters every day.
If it's made of metal, it will rust.
Steelworkers use chemistry and intense heat to turn iron ore into the backbone of buildings and bridges. Despite its great strength, steel is one unstable metal.
It's only a matter of time before the elements repatriate the stable form -- the crumbly reddish-brown flakes of oxidized iron.
Corrosion wears away steel, aluminum, copper and tin. All metals, save for the nobles -- gold, silver and platinum -- succumb to rust.
Rust is a tough, expensive problem that plagues everything from artificial heart valves to the Golden Gate Bridge. The direct cost of preventing corrosion and replacing metals tops $400 billion annually in the United States, according to estimates.
"This is the battle with Mother Nature that we'll never win," said Rudy Buchheit, chairman of the Department of Materials Science and Engineering at Ohio State University.
Buccheit and Gerald S. Frankel, director of the Fontana Corrosion Center at Ohio State, investigate how corrosion weakens beams, pipes, jets and ships, and what can help delay the inevitable.
They warn that this country's bridges, bombers and high-pressure gas lines are operating on borrowed time.
But what is rust? In the simplest terms, corrosion is an electrochemical reaction, Frankel said.
"It's as if you hooked up the two ends of a battery with a wire."
To rust, a steel beam requires water, which contains electrically charged atoms and molecules, just like battery acid.
At one spot on the beam -- think of the negative terminal of a battery -- iron atoms release electrons and combine with oxygen, turning into rust. The electrons travel to another spot on the beam -- think of the positive terminal of a battery -- and combine with hydrogen ions and then oxygen, forming water.
How quick is the process?
Take the Golden Gate Bridge. When workers finish painting one end, it's time to start scraping the other.
Neil Thompson, with Dublin-based DNV Columbus, the country's largest private corrosion lab, said there are some tricks that help postpone the rust process.
For example, the zinc coating on a galvanized steel bucket oxidizes, protecting the steel until the zinc is used up. Chromium in stainless steel helps protect against rust, but it, too, eventually wears out.
One of the best ways to stall rust is to place steel rods in a strong base, such as concrete. The steel could last hundreds of years, Thompson said.
But in bridges, chloride in road salt migrates into the concrete and jump-starts corrosion.
The Ohio Department of Transportation spreads thousands of tons of salt on the state's highways and more than 14,000 bridges each winter.
"About 80 percent of potholes on bridges are due to corrosion," Thompson said. "The product of corrosion is iron and oxygen, and that has six to eight times the volume of the steel.
"It expands and cracks the concrete."
ODOT calls it a "vicious cycle."
"We sacrifice structure but gain safety," said Mike Brokaw, a bridge inspection engineer with the department's central Ohio office.
If the department were to repair all corrosion on Ohio's bridges, it would need $4.2 billion, said Scott Varner, a department spokesman.
"The problem is, once it starts, it spreads like wildfire," said Jim Pajk, Franklin County bridge engineer.
Franklin County, which maintains 362 bridges, recently spent $3 million to replace the steel-reinforced concrete deck on the Greenlawn Avenue Bridge.
The state, county and municipalities strip and overlay damaged decks and seal them against salt penetration. With that, a well-maintained bridge deck will last about 40 years, Pajk said.
Bridges are just a part of the picture. Water, oil and natural-gas pipelines crisscross Ohio and the nation.
Columbus owns about 3,000 miles of water lines and maintains an additional 1,000 miles in the suburbs, said Rick Westerfield, administrator of the city's Power and Water Division.
"Is corrosion the main issue for us? It may well be," Westerfield said.
The city repairs 500 to 600 water main breaks per year.
Westerfield said most underground water pipes are designed to last 60 to 100 years. New pipes are coated -- inside and out -- to keep corrosion away.
And the city's water plants add 1.5 milligrams of zinc orthophosphate to each liter of water. The compound, deemed safe by the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, forms a protective coating in the lines and household plumbing.
Each year, Westerfield said, the water division spends $15 million to rehabilitate or replace less than 1 percent of its pipes.
"We're funded at a rate that's assuming the pipes will last more than 100 years."
Across the state, there are 7,670 miles of natural-gas transmission lines and 54,000 miles of distribution lines.
Columbia Gas has 19,161 miles of pipe in 60 counties.
"About 4,000 miles are pipes of steel or cast iron, put in the ground pre-1940 and are near the end of their useful life," company spokesman Ken Stammen said.
Columbia is in the midst of a 25-year, $2 billion program to replace the old lines with plastic or treated metal pipes.
The costs of dealing with corrosion are staggering. But the alternative is worse.
Corrosion has been blamed in natural-gas pipeline explosions, collapsed bridges and crumbling parking garages. Oil spills from ruptured pipelines have damaged wildlife, natural resources and drinking water supplies.
The military estimates that it spends $20 billion to $30 billion annually to fight corrosion of its ships, planes and other machines.
Small wonder the Department of Defense has provided $1.9 million in grants to the University of Akron to create the country's first four-year undergraduate program in corrosion engineering.
The major will be offered as early as in the fall of 2010, said George Haritos, dean of the College of Engineering at Akron.
Meanwhile, scientists are continuing to seek better corrosion protection.
Battelle, for example, has made a coating of nanomaterials that, layered between the primer and top-coat on airplane skins, lights up when corrosion is present.
An early-warning system could enable airlines and the military to make cheaper repairs and reduce flight risk.
Doug Hansen, a senior scientist at the University of Dayton Research Institute, is leading an effort to grow the material that forms oyster shells on the wings of planes, artificial joints and implants.
His team has manipulated oyster blood cells to deposit a thin, salt-water resistant coating of mother-of-pearl on aluminum. At Sheffield Hallam University in England, researchers recently announced that they had encapsulated spores from certain bacteria in a coating that protects aluminum alloys from microbial corrosion, a particular menace for sea vessels.
msomerson@dispatch.com
"The problem is, once (rust) starts, it spreads like wildfire."
Jim Pajk
Franklin County bridge engineer
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