Molecular tailoring and engineering of polymer-based materials for marine corrosion and metal ion detection applications

Corrosion is a long-lasting and challenging issue to modern industrial activities, especially to marine and offshore industries. In fact, the costs related to corrosion and corrosion prevention is a significant part of the gross national product in the world. Due to the increasing demand for marine transportation and oil and gas exploitation, solving the technological difficulties relevant to corrosion protection is absolutely essential. Epoxy resins have become one of the most widely used polymers in coating applications. However, common epoxy resins show undesirable water moisture affinity, which may lower their performance as anticorrosion coatings. Therefore, a series of polysiloxane derivatives have been synthesized and blended with epoxy resins as additives. The resulting material has been investigated by various chemical characterizations and numerical simulation of the cathodic protection system, called BEASY. As a result, various analyses confirmed that the performance of epoxy resin coatings in terms of corrosion protection was greatly enhanced