Before analyzing the phenomenon of aluminium corrosion, it is important to underline what is the meaning of the term corrosion. It’s defined as the destructive alteration of metal through interactions with its surroundings. The consequence is an alteration of the characteristics of the metal. On the Aluminum Atlas, by H. Wilquin, you can read that there are various types of aluminium corrosion: atmospheric corrosion, galvanic corrosion, stress-corrosion cracking, intergranular corrosion, exfoliating corrosion, pitting corrosion, filiform corrosion.
Aluminium pretreatment
Some coatings and lacquers can be used to make aluminium more resistant to corrosion. Pretreatment is an essential process to assure the perfect adhesion of the paint to the metal. So, we can affirm that before lacquering an aluminum surface is necessary to degrease it chemically and carry out a pretreatment in order to guarantee the perfect application of the lacquer.
Aluminium Corrosion in marine environments
Localized corrosion caused by chloride attack present in marine environments is one of the most serious forms of corrosion for aluminum alloys. In particular, for this problem Italcoat developed a varnish that can protect the material: Hygrosieve®, an hygroscopic lacquer. This coating offers a lot of advantages: no risk of coating pulverisation, selective adsorption of water moisture with the exclusion of pollutants, chance to add biocide additive to the formulation, reduction of the flow rates of refrigerant fluid.
If you’re interested in this product or in other lacquers developed to stop aluminium corrosion, please contact us!