Review Lecture - Corrosion of metals: its cost and control

Abstract

In early 1969 I was invited by the then Minister of Technology to be Chairman of a committee to investigate and assess the cost per annum in the U. K. of corrosion and the means available for its alleviation. We had the services of a small secretariat seconded from the United Kingdom Atomic Energy Authority, and by dividing the committee of 15 or so persons into a number of small working parties we were able to examine a large random but representative sample of industrial and governmental establishments and to discover from their managements how they regarded corrosion and what they considered it cost them. From a knowledge of companies’ outputs coupled with the known total output of their section of industry, we were able to estimate a figure for total corrosion loss in that section: from other information from companies, and from our own industrial experience, we could further estimate how much could be saved through the correct use of existing information on corrosion control, without the need for any new research or development. These figures are given in table 1, taken from our Report to the Department of Trade and Industry (1971). The 1635 megapound (M£) for the total cost per annum and 310 M£ for the potential savings do not include corrosion costs in agriculture or in domestic dwellings, and even so were probably conservative four years ago: today, figures of M£ 2500 for total cost and M£ 500 for avoidable waste would not be exaggerations. We discovered a great variation in ‘corrosion awareness’ of management in different sections of industry. Thus, the oil and chemical industries, with their manifold problems of plant and products, and the aircraft industries with their preoccupation with safety, showed a high degree of corrosion awareness. On the other hand, the transport, marine and construction industries showed–especially in the smaller units ─ a tendency to regard the failure of metals by corrosion not only as an act of God, as inevitable as biological demise, but as an incurable malady not economically worth controlling and therefore not worth bothering about. Indeed, one small company told our interviewers that they had no corrosion problems and so could save nothing by the proper use of the principles of corrosion control─only to inform us a few months later that following our visit they had by their internal investigations found that proper control could save them £10000 per annum.