A  DISCUSSION ON VARIOUS METHODS

OF ELECTRONIC CORROSION CONTROL:

Corrosion can be considered a electrochemical reaction and because of this it may be subject to electrochemical and thus also electronic control. Iron and oxygen have chemically opposite charge natures and therefore seek to combine to form rust. (remember opposites attract, likes repel).

The quicker that iron is allowed to combine with oxygen the quicker a metal object deteriorates into rust.

Conventional impressed current cathodic protection is a proven electronic process for rust and corrosion control in buried and submerged objects that has been successfully employed for over half a century.

CounterAct's Electrostatic Corrosion Control Technology should not be confused with conventional "Impressed Current Cathodic Protection" which is commonly used for corrosion control underground tanks, pipelines and other buried and submerged structures.

Conventional impressed current cathodic protection works well in these environments but fails to address the problems of corrosion in open air because of lack of sufficiently conductive medium to carry the protective current to the structure to be protected.  Moist soil or water provide a good conductive path to carry this electrical current from the electrodes to the structure, but the very thin moisture layer that condenses on an above ground structure or vehicle's painted surface provides an extremely high resistance to these protective currents. For this reason attempts to employ impressed current cathodic protection to reduce corrosion on vehicles and open air structures have failed to solve the problem. Impressed current cathodic protection is limited in its usefulness to structures buried in soil, submerged in water or embedded in concrete.

"The CounterAct electrostatic corrosion control system was specifically designed to address open air corrosion problems. CounterAct's technology, because it relies upon electrostatic fields rather than impressed current electricity, is currently the only proven and demonstrated electronic method that can effectively deal with the problem of open air corrosion."

Electrostatic Corrosion Control

vs Electronic Corrosion Control

In the CounterAct corrosion control system, the electrostatic field that is created on the metal structure or vehicle's body slows down the rate of charge transport in the extremely minute moisture layer on the vehicles body, thus reducing the rate at which the normal oxidation reaction can take  place.  In other words the CounterAct corrosion control system acts like a catalyst altering the rate of the reaction without actually affecting any change in the thermodynamics of the reaction.

In layman's terms since "likes repel and opposites attract" what tends to happen at a charged surface is that a layer of oppositely charged particles tends to accumulate parallel to the applied surface charge so that if the surface of a metal body is being charged negatively (as in the case of the CounterAct corrosion control method) a positive charge accumulates adjacent to the negative surface charge. Similarly a more diffuse second negative charge layer accumulates outside but adjacent to the first positive charge layer, a second positive charge layer accumulates outside of the second negative charge layer an even more diffuse third negative charge layer accumulates outside the second positive layer and this process of continuously weaker alternating negatively and positively charged layers continues theoretically to infinity. This is a well known phenomenon which actually presents a problem for analytical chemists as particles in solution are prevented from reaching an electrode and therefore create understated values for the particle's actual concentrations.

See Also;

Motor Vehicles

Capacitive Coupling

CounterAct Counterfeits