The seemingly inconspicuous corrosion, the economic losses caused by each year to account for about 5%of my country's GDP

Author:Look at the think tank Time:2022.09.16

Corrosion is really too small and too small, so that many people question whether this subject is necessary. When I started thinking about some corrosive science problems, I found that it touched the ultimate problem of life deep in my heart.

Everyone has the ultimate problem in life. Although I consciously qualified, when I was very young, it may be a kindergarten or a time when I was younger. I once asked myself and my family very seriously: "Why do people live?" Since then, I have asked similar questions Friends are attributed to their confidants. Slowly, I started to contact philosophical works. I learned that in ancient times, a foreigner also asked similar questions. This person was Plato.

Of course, the question asked by Plato was not exactly the same as my question. He divided my question into three sub -questions: Who am I? Where do I come from? Where am I going? Since then, I have regarded Plato as a close friend of life across time and space. But I found that he did not treat me like this, because except these three sentences, other works in Plato, I almost couldn't understand it. So so far, I can't convince myself: Where do I come from? Where am I going?

Text 丨 Wang Changzheng Institute of Materials Environmental Corrosion Research Center of the Institute of Metal Research of the Institute of Metals of the Chinese Academy of Sciences

This article is reproduced from the WeChat public account "Gezhi Tao Tao forum" (ID: Selftalks). The original first was released on September 9, 2022. About 5%| Wang Changyi "does not mean watching think tank views.

The previous life of metal water faucet, this life, and the future

At this moment, the corrosion science told me how to simplify the complex model. Although I can't persuade myself, I can tell him what the faucet made by a metal, what should it look like in its past life, this life, and the future?

Metal faucet

I quickly searched the knowledge of material science in my brain, and imagined that the previous life of this metal faucet should be like this: red iron ore, reddish brown, the main ingredient is tritermi dioxide.

Red iron ore

When people discover it, it will be mining and through complex, flames such as mineral selection, smelting, casting, and necessary molding.

Processing

There is only one purpose for people to do this, which is to take the red oxygen atom in the lattice from the iron ore. After that, after the necessary processing, you can get this bright and beautiful faucet, although this brightness is only temporary.

Crystal structure

why? Because although oxygen atoms were taken out, it was thinking about trying to return to the faucet every moment. Therefore, a few years later, the faucet became rusty. In a few years, it may run into the garbage dump. If you are fortunate to return to the furnace, it can become new metal; if unfortunately, it will return to the earth and wait for people to minimize again, and this probability is extremely low.

Looking back at the past, this life, and the future of a faucet, you will find that this reincarnation is very similar to the life state discussed in Buddhism. Of course, we have to abandon all mysterious colors.

I just want to say one thing, everyone here, all the metals around you, the current state of existence is very short and unstable. Corrosion is their only fate. The oxidation state after corrosion is the stable state that they can permanently exist.

Corrosion cost

You may not imagine that the fate of such a small metal corrosion requires us to pay a great price. How much is this price? In 2013, Ke Wei, an academician of the Chinese Academy of Engineering, did such a thing that compiled a "China Corrosion Survey Report". This report systematically statistics on my country's economic losses caused by corrosion, which is equivalent to consuming a detailed account for corrosion loss. This account involves all walks of life, including all metals around us.

How is this account calculated? We take the corrosion loss of a car as an example. According to statistics, the average annual cost of a car is 1260 yuan. Many friends think that they have never spent money on the corrosion of the car. How can such a small number of numbers be calculated?

In fact, everyone doesn't understand. Except for refueling, all other maintenance costs of the car are actually spent on corrosion. For example, the opportunity of the car is invalid due to high temperature corrosion and oxidation and wear. The exhaust holes will cause dew -point corrosion, and the chassis and surface paint of the car are also to prevent corrosion. In addition, the aging of the entire car body is also due to corrosion. Therefore, the cost of a car on corrosion is 1260 yuan each year.

Another example is the corrosion of Beijing West Zhimen Interchange Bridge. Northern my country often snow. In order to remove snow, people often sprinkle some snow removal agents on the ground. The main component of the snow removal is sodium chloride, which is very terrible to corrosion because it can induce almost all possible corrosion.

Therefore, when the chlorine ion is constantly entering the steel bars through the bridge, the steel bars will be corroded. In the long run, the carrying capacity of the overpass will greatly decline. In order to make up for the lack of carrying capacity, people must oppose the bridge to repair, and the cost of repair is as high as 30 million yuan.

After all these things were counted, Academician Ke Wei received a very important conclusion: my country ’s economic losses caused by corrosion each year accounting for about 5%of the total national product. What kind of number is this? We take the year of 2008 as an example. The total national product of this year is a long number, so that we can't read it. Among them, the economic losses caused by corrosion can be multiplied by 5%with this number, and the final amount is 1.6 trillion yuan. Although this number is relatively simple, there is still no concept for most people, because the value is too large.

Let me give an example. Also in 2008, a 5.12 earthquake occurred in the Wenchuan area of my country. This earthquake shocked the world and the magnitude of the earthquake reached 8.0. The economic loss caused by the earthquake to my country is as high as 800 billion yuan. Compared with the previous numbers, it is not difficult to find that the economic losses caused by corrosion each year in my country are equivalent to two Wenchuan earthquakes.

Of course, the damage caused by the Wenchuan earthquake to our national spirit is far from being measured by economic figures, because the earthquake will destroy our homeland, take away relatives and friends around us, and even our own life. This loss It is huge.

Some people may feel that compared with the earthquake, the money "burned" every year is also acceptable to bite the teeth. But I want to use a bloody example to tell everyone that when the disaster is really coming, corrosion is not inferior to the earthquake.

This picture is Huangdao District, Qingdao City, November 22, 2013. There is a characteristic of Huangdao District. There are many long -lost buried pipelines underground to transport oil and natural gas. On the day of November 22, one of the pipelines were corrosive, and perforated leaks occurred. Petroleum continued to flow into the ground, and the ghosts flowed into the municipal pipe network.

Huangdao District, Qingdao City, November 22, 2013

In a closed space such as the municipal pipe network, if there is an oil and gas mixture in it, it will become a huge bomb model. And unfortunately, this bomb did encountered a bright fire, so the explosion of "嘭" caused the following tragedies: the entire street was overturned, and the surrounding cars were all flying a few meters or even a dozen meters high. The glass was almost shattered. The accident killed 62 people and 136 people were injured.

Explosion scene

When we see such a painful lesson, can we realize that corrosion is actually very dangerous?

Looking back and opening the "China Corrosion Investigation Report", we will find that this accident is not uncommon in the 20th century, and it usually occurs in oil or chemical companies. In fact, there is another industry, which is also played with corrosion at all times.

In 2011, nuclear leaks, fires and explosions also occurred in the Fukushima nuclear power plant in Japan.

Nuclear energy can be used as a clean and efficient energy source, which is used for everyone, and can also be used as the most terrible killing weapon in the world. identity of. If the "angel" encounters corrosion, will it become a "devil"?

In the nuclear reactor of the nuclear power plant, almost all components are made of metal, and there are a hydrophilic environment in many circuits. This means that when the electrolyte encounters metal, a complete corrosion system will be formed.

In addition, many parts of the reactor are in a special extreme extreme environment of high temperature and high pressure, which is extremely sensitive to corrosion. It is not difficult to imagine that the nuclear reactor almost covers almost all possible forms of corrosion, and these corrosion will often harass nuclear power plants around the world.

Corrosion threatens to nuclear power stations around the world

Corrodes

Of course, I said that these are not to cause panic, but to tell everyone, especially those who expressed contempt for us who are engaged in corrosive scientific research should pay attention to corrosion. We will also stand up and use professional means to corrode and stifle in the bud.

Our work is exactly the same as the doctor. Although the working environment may be very different, our job nature is very similar. The doctor's medical target may be a kind old grandma. If you are lucky, you will also encounter a beautiful girl. But for me, it is always cold machinery and equipment. Of course, from a certain perspective, this big guy is still very metallic and has a feeling of American blockbuster.

Three Gorges Group Water Government

This big guy is a water turbine used by the Three Gorges Group for power generation. When the water flows the blades, the water turbine rotates and converts the kinetic energy into electrical energy. The water turbine is very large, with a diameter of more than 20 meters long, and people stand in front of it very small.

At that time, the machine was "sick". I observed with a device similar to a stethoscope and found that there were many small holes in "body". In terms of professional terms, this hole is called local corrosion or point erosion.

It is a very special form of corrosion. It is different from the rust corrosion of the metal we saw before. It is a hole in one or more small dots, and it is caused by its own anion gathering and local acidification. The catalytic effect, this point will gradually grow quickly in the metal body, and it is difficult to predict.

Local corrosion (point erosion)

In the face of this situation, what we have to do is just like the doctor's diagnosis and treatment of the patient in the hospital: first issued a lot of orders to the water turbine, let it do related examinations, and analyze the "condition" based on the inspection report. Finally, the "condition" is given appropriate "treatment". We will also issue a material procurement report and formulate a "healthy life law" for it, such as a healthy operation report.

"Treatment" corrosion

In addition, we also have other "treatment" methods, such as corrosion, cathode protection, paint, and so on. If the problem is too big, doctors generally recommend patients for surgery, and we will recommend that enterprises replace equipment. This is how we use professional means to inhibit corrosion and stifle the work process in the bud.

In addition to conventional diagnosis and treatment, doctors in many large hospitals will also do basic scientific research work. These tasks are also the main business of our corrosive scholars, so my work is exactly the same as the doctor. We will conduct in -depth research on a certain corrosion problem or a form of corrosion, and at the same time explore how to use corrosion to do something that is beneficial to humans.

Use corrosion

There is such a sentence in "Tao Te Ching": "Survival, blessing, blessing; blessing, what happens." In other words, everything has two sides, and these two sides are constantly transforming. Therefore, in some special circumstances, corrosion is not a derogatory term, but will benefit humans.

Let's guess who these people are and what they are doing.

Doctors take the bone nails in the patient's legs

They are doctors. When a person's leg bone fractures, the doctor will implant one or more bone nails into the leg bone. The bone nails can play a fixed role, allowing the leg bone to heal slowly.

However, when the leg bone heals, the bone nails on the leg bone appears to be contrary to reconciliation. The first is not beautiful, and the second is some other problems, such as causing inflammation. At this time, the doctor needs to take the bone nail out of the patient's legs. What they just did was to take out the bone nails in the patient's legs. When I saw this video, I was really sweating for the patient, worried that the leg bone that had been worried about was crushed again.

The process of surgery is still terrible, although we firmly believe that every doctor has its own professional ethics and professional literacy, the operation is definitely okay. Even so, such rough movements will definitely cause a lot of harm to the patient's physical and mental.

How good it would be if this process disappeared. In other words, how good the bone nails can disappear.

Those who are engaged in structural materials are very annoying to have a material, which is particularly lively magnesium alloy. To what extent is it lively? If you throw magnesium alloy to Hainan, a few months later, it is disappeared, and it is impossible to see the "corpse" of magnesium alloy rusty. It is so lively. But isn't this exactly what we need now?

We can use a lively magnesium alloy to use its rapid corrosion speed to make degradable magnesium alloy bone nails, and then implant it into the patient's leg bone. We can prepare magnesium alloy bone nails with different life span for different patients and different rehabilitation cycles.

When the patient's leg bone grows well, the bone nails will melt and disappear by themselves, and the magnesium ions released in this process are exactly the trace elements needed by the human body. What a perfect combination!

Magnesium alloy bone nail corrosion process

Of course, the application of corrosion is far more than that, but also the degradable stent or the carving of the circuit board. I believe that there will be more fields waiting for us to develop and explore in the future.

After the above introduction, everyone may have a certain understanding of corrosion science and our work. After waiting for tens of trillion years of waiting for a faucet, after the rebirth of hundreds of testers, they are pursuing only tens of thousands of stable service.

We corrode people are also committed to this, and we are committed to maximizing the short life of each metal, benefiting people, just like the beautiful cherry blossoms, gorgeous and short -lived, and born to death.

Thank you for listening to my speech, and thank you for paying attention to corrosion science. Thanks!

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