INDUSTRIAL APPLICATIONS

Finally, a cure for rust

The steel industry refers to rust as the “Cancer of Steel.” Rust Bullet, the new technology rust/corrosion control product, has come to market to cure this age old disease. Rust Bullet will revolutionize industries’ battles against corrosion with a simple, one step application (two coats), little or no preparation, low maintenance product that is not a short-term fix, but actually cures this disease called rust. CC Technologies conducted research in a cooperative agreement with the Federal Highway Administration (FHWA) and NACE International (National Association of Corrosion Engineers) to provide the public with a corrosion cost report. According to this report, the direct cost of corrosion in the United States is $276 billion annually. This was determined by analyzing 26 industrial sectors in which corrosion is known to exist. The indirect costs to society are conservatively estimated to be equal to the direct costs. Evidence of the large indirect corrosion costs are lost time, and thus lost productivity because of outages, delays, failures, and litigation. Indirect costs are often ignored because only the direct costs are paid by the owner/operator.

Some preventative strategies to manage corrosion are:

• Increase awareness of large corrosion costs and potential savings.
• Change the misconception that nothing can be done about corrosion.
• Change policies, regulations, standards, and management practices to increase corrosion savings through sound corrosion management.
• Improve education and training of staff in recognition of corrosion control.
• Advance design practices for better corrosion management.
• Advance life prediction and performance assessment methods.
• Advance corrosion technology through research, development, and implementation.

But wait, there’s more

It is known that the corrosion of metal structures has a significant impact on the U.S. economy, including infrastructure, transportation, utilities, production and manufacturing, and government. A 1975-benchmark study by Battelle-NBS calculated the cost of corrosion to be $70 billion per year, which was 4.2 percent of the nation’s gross national product (GNP). Other studies, both in the United States and abroad have addressed the cost of corrosion as well. New technologies to prevent corrosion continue to be developed and cost based corrosion management techniques are available to further lower corrosion costs. However, cost-effective methods are not always implemented. Better corrosion management can be achieved using preventive strategies at every level of involvement (owner, operator, user, government, Federal regulators, and general public). This report will be of interest to government regulators and policy makers involved in materials-related issues, the general public, and practicing engineers concerned with materials of construction and process design.