CORROSION PREDICTION IN COMPLEX ENVIRONMENTS USING ELECTROCHEMICAL IMPEDANCE SPECTROSCOPY

Rapid corrosion estimation in poorly defined, complex environments is required for making appropriate materials related decisions in the pro cess industries. One problem is that the chemistry of these systems is often impossible to characterize. Using corrosion screening in proces s waste as an example, this paper examines how electrochemical impedan ce spectroscopy (EIS) can contribute to screening metal corrosion in t hese types of environments. Lack of characterization forces the carefu l use of circuit analogues to model the results. Good agreement betwee n corrosion rates estimated by EIS, dc polarization and short term mas s loss is used to provide confidence that the circuit models invoked t o classify the spectra are reasonable.