Category Archives: Coatings

Valves are particularly sensitive to corrosion as relatively small amounts of corrosion can lead to the inability to actuate them, seal and control flow which will eventually lead to an uncontrolled process or unexpected down time.

While solar and wind energy hold great promise for the future, the biggest challenge facing the mass commercialization of these technologies is the ability to store the electricity they generate. By gaining the ability to store power from these intermittent sources, one would have access to this power whether night or day, windy or calm.

Tantalum is an amazing element due to its unrivaled corrosion resistance. As most corrosion resistant alloys have corrosion rates in strong acids, tantalum metal typically has none.  Because of this characteristic, tantalum is ideal as a coated diffusion surface and is often used to protect critical stainless steel process equipment from strong acids. However in lethal services, this is not enough, as products need to be fail-safe should there be an unforeseen breach in the tantalum surface and the base steel substrate is exposed.

Corrosion resistant coatings in industry have been around for decades and over the years numerous coatings and methods to apply them have been developed.  But how many are corrosion proof?