A Study on the Corrosion of Cu-Ni Alloy in Chlorinated Seawater for Marine Applications

Corrosion of the Cu alloy with 10wt% Ni in stagnant seawater with residual free chlorine was investigated. Despite that fact that Cu alloys are widely used for seawater applications due to their stubborn resistance to chloride attack, not much is known as to how the residual free chlorine in seawater affects corrosion of Cu and its alloys. In this work, immersion tests were conducted in the presence of different levels of chlorine for 90-10 Cu-Ni samples, one of the most frequently used Cu alloys for seawater application, mostly in shipbuilding. The results revealed no evidence for accelerated corrosion of the Cu-Ni alloy even in the presence of 5 ppm residual chlorine in seawater, signifying that the Cu-Ni alloy can be more tolerant to residual chlorine that has been commonly cited by the shipbuilding industry. However, comparison of polarization behavior of the alloy samples in the presence of different electrolytes with different concentrations of residual chlorine suggests that higher concentration of chlorine could increase the corrosion rate of the Cu-Ni alloy. Furthermore, it is suggested that microorganisms in the seawater could increase the corrosion rate of the Cu-Ni alloy by encouraging exfoliation of the corrosion product off the metal surface.

잔류 염소가 포함된 해수에서의 Cu-Ni 합금의 부식 거동 연구