Category Archives: News

Corrosion Testing of Oil-Based Rust Prevention Spray

Oil-based coatings can be used to enhance the corrosion resistance of metals and therefore increase their lifetime. Such oils can be applied either by spraying or by using a brush on metal substrates in their real application environments. Recently we performed an accelerated corrosion test on different oil-based coating products for our client Sia Auto Truck Studio, who were particularly interested in the performance of a spray-type oil based coating – an NHOU Rust Prevention Spray. As the name suggests, the coating can be sprayed on the substrate directly from the bottle, which creates an uniform coating. This is achieved by using a proper combination of oil viscosity and spray bottle design, which creates an expanding cone of expelled oil particles, that create a defect free coating on the metal substrate. The corrosion test was performed on 90×90 mm low carbon steel plates, that are extremely vulnerable to corrosion. For testing, the Machu test was used, which is essentially an accelerated corrosion test in an acidified salt solution with hydrogen peroxide. This test allows to obtain results already within 48 hours, which is useful for quickly gaining feedback on the performance of materials and coatings before carrying out long-term immersion or salt spray tests. As can be seen from the photo in Figure 1, the coated sample remained relatively unharmed after the test, exhibiting only a few individual sites of corrosion in the central area. Only the edge of the sample suffered damage from corrosion as it was problematic to coat for this particular test. Overall, the coating exhibited good performance and should therefore be tested further with long-term immersion and salt spray tests, electrochemical techniques and finally in real application environment.

Figure 1. Photo of low carbon steel with NHOU Rust Prevention Spray coating after Machu test (an accelerated 48 corrosion test).

Project EU53688

Over the last few years we have been actively developing corrosion monitoring systems for a variety of applications that include pipes and containers in water oil and gas industries, outdoor metal structures (e.g. roofs, oil platforms, power grid etc.) and most importantly reusable rockets and fusion reactors. The funding obtained from Enterprise Estonia (EAS) in the project EU53688 allows us to proceed with the next step, which is the commercialization of the developed technologies.

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Project: Hand-held Corrosion Monitoring Device

A large portion of the annual cost of corrosion can be attributed to the corrosion of pipes and ventilation systems. However, the corroding surface is mostly inaccessible in these conditions and therefore the detection and monitoring of corrosion for evaluating the need for possible maintenance is problematic.

Our solution to the problem is a hand-held corrosion monitoring device, that is capable of detecting the corrosion that takes place inside pipes while the measurements are done outside. We currently have a working prototype but we want to investigate also alternative approaches in order to come to the market with a user friendly product.

The development of the prototypes is funded by Captain Corrosion OÜ and Prototron.

 

Project: Mysterious World in Slow Motion

In a world, where amazing things happen so fast, that they remain invisible for an unaided eye, exists a technology that can stretch out time. It is a high speed camera, that records thousands of frames within a second, making it able to expose what actually happens in extremely brief moments. Strap yourself in and join us in this epic adventure to explore our marvelous world in slow motion!

During this project, we organize several workshops and open door experiments, where participants can film fast phenomena from daily life with our new high speed camera. The reference code for registration to slow-motion workshops and outdoor experiments is “ETAG2018”.  The best footage filmed in the events is afterwards published as part of science videos on our YouTube channel:

 

 

This project is partially funded by the Estonian Research Council and the Estonian Ministry of Education and Research, which allowed us to purchase the high speed camera.

Project EU51950

Description:

Assembly and programming of an electronic measurement device that allows to perform materials characterization in space on student satellite ESTCube-2. (EST: Mõõteseadme valmistamine ja programmeerimine materjaliuuringute jaoks kosmoses tudengisatelliidil ESTCube-2). This electronic device is one of the two major components in our developed corrosion testing module, which will be used to test a novel nanostructured coating and a smart radiation shielding material in LEO (Low Earth Orbit).

Funding

The preparation, programming and preliminary testing of the electronic measurement device is carried out by Hedgehog OÜ and funded by Captain Corrosion OÜ (30%) and Enterprise Estonia (70%).

Partners

ESTCube group assists us with the planning of this experiment and with the integration of our corrosion testing module to the student satellite ESTCube-2. Once the satellite is in space, we will also carry out the tests together.

Laboratory of Thin Film Technology (University of Tartu) is our main partner for assembling the test system as well as other prototypes, that will be used to test the patented nanostructured coating. With them we also carry out laboratory-based materials characterization measurements and tests.

Science Video Series: Under The Scanning Electron Microscope

We are currently making a science video series about scanning electron microscopy studies. In these videos we discuss the sample preparation and show how things actually look like in the microscopic scale.

Videos can be seen in our YouTube channel.

The scanning electron microscopy images made in these studies are uploaded to our gallery.

New Salt Spray Test Chamber

The corrosion scientists of the University of Tartu have a new expensive toy – a salt spray test chamber that allows to study the performance of materials and protective coatings similar to real conditions.

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Arrival of the salt spray test chamber – on the image Maido Merisalu (founder of Captain Corrosion OÜ).