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orrosion costs the chemical industry hundreds of millions of dollars per year. Yet our technological approach to it remains almost entirely empirical. Perhaps we are missing a really profitable use of fundamental mechanistic thinking by not applying it more extensively to this problem. Much good work has been done in creating materials to resist the corrosive environment. Much has been done on coatings, claddings, and films to isolate the less resistant materials of construction from corrosive media. Relatively little, however, has been done with the corrosive environment itself-and even less with the surface-environment interaction. There have been good reasons for this situation, as treating a process stream to reduce its corrosiveness might in many cases seem an almost impossible task, while understanding surface chemical reactions has been delayed by difficulties in characterizing the surfaces themselves. There are signs now, however, that both of these areas are receiving increased attention and that a more mechanistic approach to corrosion become possible. An excellent discussion of recent work in these and other related areas of research appeared in Chemical and Engineering News recently (April 5, page 78). Two more signs are on display in this issue. O n page 14, we report on results from the Research Institute for Advanced Studies of the Martin Co. in Baltimore. A. R . C. Westwood, author of ‘‘Surface Sensitive Mechanical Properties” from the Interface Symposium (I&EC, Sept. 1964, page 14), and a highly original metallurgist, has, with his RIAS associates, obtained information which suggests that stress corrosion cracking is influenced by the presence of complex ions in the corrosive environment-and that only traces of such ions are needed for severe attack. On page 34, M . B. Ives of McMaster University draws corrosion inferences from basic studies in the rate of dissolution of single crystals. The work was stimulated by fuel cell electrode problems, an apparently unrelated subject. But what happens to the single crystal subjected to a high chemical driving force-the fuel cell environment-may possibly be extrapolated to predict behavior of a polycrystalline material of construction subjected to a low chemical driving forcethe usual corrosion environment. Ives’s work won’t help a design engineer to specify a material of construction today or next week. It was not done for that purpose. But study of Ives’s report will acquaint the inquisitive engineer with a potentially fruitful thought process and will help him to develop his own insight into the mechanisms of corrosion. It may even lead him to activity of his own to extend Ives’s results and drive the thin wedge of understanding deeper into the unknown aspects of this important industrial problem.
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A D V I S O R Y B O A R D T h o m a s Baron, R. B. Beckmann, C. 0. Bennett, E. G. Bobalek, F. G. Cia etta J. J. Fischer, Bra e Goldin John H a pel, F: Johnson. A. A. Jonfe, F. C. &Grew, A. l?. Rescorla, Arthur .Rose, B. H. Sage, Joseph Stewart, T. J. Williams
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Probing at the Roots of Corrosion
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