Topic: Corrosion Science, Corrosion Engineering and New Technologies

Speaker: Professor R. M. Latanision

　　　　　Director (Emeritus), The H.H. Uhlig Corrosion Laboratory, MIT, and
　　　　　Senior Fellow, Exponent, Inc.

Abstract:

It has become increasingly clear that the interplay between corrosion science and corrosion engineering is integral to advances in the technologies that serve broad societal needs. Interest in the use of supercritical water oxidation (SCWO) as a means of treating military and civilian wastes requires the development of a thermodynamic database for supercritical conditions as well as an understanding of the susceptibility of candidate constructional materials to corrosion phenomena under conditions that are virtually unstudied today. The coupling of laboratory testing and pilot-scale field experience is similarly crucial in terms of the construction of large-scale systems. The same is true of nuclear electric generation using supercritical water media which, given the higher operating temperatures that are required, would lead to increased thermal efficiencies. From energy conversion and waste treatment to transportation systems, electronic and optical communications and to the medical devices that are now and will in the future lead to ever increased quality of life for all of us, such advances depend on new and improved materials, the means to process them and an understanding of how to protect them from corrosion in service.

In the above context, it is intersting to note that physical chemists and surface chemists also have interests in the same kinds of interactions that occur on an atomic scale when metals such as nickel or platinum are used, for example, as catalysts for chemical reactions. Such metals are very effective catalysts for the dissociation of molecular hydrogen. Why is it that nickel and platinum are effective hydrogenation catalysts, but copper is not. It seems likely that the development of fundamental understanding of the kind implicit in the above discussion of the catalytic dissociation of hydrogen (the embrittlement of the hydrogen molecule) would impact as well understanding of the fundamentals of the embrittlement of metals surfaces (dissociation of metal atomic bonds) in the presence of embrittling species such as hydrogen. It seems quite clear now that much is known or may be developed by organometallic chemists, quantum chemists, and others that bears directly on problems of embrittlement and fracture of interest to materials scientists and mechanical engineers. It is equally clear that the technological significance of the interaction of environments such as hydrogen, liquid metals, hot (perhaps molten) salts, etc., with materials will become of even greater consequence in the decades to come as a global CO₂ recycling, a potential hydrogen economy, breeder reactors, space defense vehicles, etc., take on importance in the ever evolving world that we inhabit.

In our increasingly technological world, it seems to me that all of us, as memebers of that small segment of the population that is identified with technology, have to become technological statesmen. The public is incresingly skeptical of technology (and, probably, technophobic) despite the technologicval intensity of life on this planet. I believe that we must, therefore, devote some of our energy, independently or collectively, to make science and technology understandable and palatable to the public worldwide. People are justifiably anxious about the risks associated with technology, and I mean not just the risks that involve public safety, but social, economic and environmental risks as well. The unintended consequences of technological advances require that technologists consider the potential of such issues in any new development. In an historical sense, technologists have, by failing to thoughtfully steward technology may lose public trust. We should commit ourselves to changing this.