The effects of water pollution on the immersion corrosion of mild and low alloy steels

The short-term immersion corrosion of mild and low alloy steels in seawaters is known to be proportional to the concentration of dissolved oxygen (DO) in the bulk water. Longer-term corrosion is a function of the activity of sulphate-reducing bacteria and is influenced by the concentration of nutrients in the bulk water. These influences are examined in more detail for the corrosion of steels in the brackish waters of the River Thames and for several immersion corrosion sites on the Eastern Australian seaboard and in the North Sea. The published data sources were supplemented with plausible assumptions about environmental conditions. New interpretations of the data are provided based on the previously published model for immersion corrosion. For waters with negligible salinity and sulphate levels early corrosion loss was shown to depend on the dissolved oxygen content of the waters, and later corrosion loss was a direct function of nitrogenous nutrient (pollution) levels. This also applies to longer-term corrosion.