An electro-chemical test and optimization system for impressed current cathodic corrosion protection

A simple electro-chemical test and an optimization system for impressed current cathodic protection (ICCP) for the A36 hot-rolled steel bar is presented in this article. A simple two-electrode based test system using an electro-chemical cell to test the corrosion rate of the target metal is proposed. The Tafel plot to determine the corrosion rate of the target metal is prepared using our simple test system and the corrosion current (i_corr) is extrapolated from the Tafel plot. A novel technique by impressing the corrosion current to protect the target metal using ICCP is implemented and tested. The proposed protection system further simplifies the corrosion protection system compared to the current methods. To determine effectiveness of the proposed protection system, weight loss of a freely corroding target metal and a protected sample of the target metal are compared. For 0.6 M NaCl solution as a test environment, both the metal samples are tested for two weeks. The protected metal sample is protected using our novel closed-loop protection system using 2.4 - 4.25 mW power with protection feedback every 24 hours. The weight reduction of the freely corroding metal sample is 0.017533 weight percentage per day and for the protected metal sample is 0.003357 weight percentage per day. Hence, the weight lost of the freely corroded metal is 5.22 times faster than the protected metal sample.