Study On The Accelerated Galvanic Corrosion Behavior And Antifouling Performance Of Copper Alloy

The materials of ship seawater pipeline are mainly made of copper alloy or stainless steel. In order to improve the corrosion resistance and reduce the weight of seawater pipeline, titanium alloy pipeline is a major research direction in the future. Compared with the copper alloy, titanium alloy has a lower density and better corrosion resistance. But one of the disadvantages is good biocompatibility. So titanium surface is easily attached to the creatures in marine environment. Serious biological fouling problem will be taken place in the titanium pipeline internal if we did nothing. After bio-fouling take place, the effective diameter and thermal efficiency of pipeline will be reduced. All these can lead to machine irregular working and even stop. Huge economic losses can be caused. Therefore, it is necessary to study a new antifouling technology for titanium pipeline.In this paper, a new type of anti-fouling device had been developed to solve the contaminative problem of the titanium alloy pipeline. Copper alloy, as the main material, was used to release copper ions on the basis of the galvanic corrosion principle. Creatures in the pipeline were killed. So the biological fouling was prevented.According to the copper ion antifouling concentration, the dissolution rate of copper ions in the pipeline is determined at 56.16 g/(m2﹒d). The copper ions dissolution rate of different copper materials in seawater is studied. The results showed that compared with other materials, red copper has the largest copper ions dissolution rate of in static seawater, reaching 0.827 g/(m2﹒d). Tin bronze have the greatest copper ions dissolution rate of 19.74 g/(m2﹒d) in flushing conditions.The composite materials made up of copper powder and other materials, were used to study the dissolution rate of copper ions. It was shown that the material of Cu- 20% Cu2 O has the largest dissolution rate of copper ions(62.18 g/(m2﹒d)). This material can reach the requirements of antifouling.Red copper and other materials were connected to accelerate the dissolution rate of copper ions by using the theory of galvanic corrosion. The results showed that the precious metal oxide-red copper galvanic couple has the largest copper ions accelerate dissolution rate. It was found that when the area ratio of precious metal oxides to red copper is 4:1, the dissolution rate of copper ions can meet the requirements of pipeline anti-fouling(58.89 g/(m2﹒d)).According to the foregoing results, the antifouling device sample were prepared and installed to the titanium alloy pipeline to study the anti-fouling ability in marine environment. It was shown that during the test cycle, the concentration of copper ions in pipeline was more than 4 ppb. The titanium alloy pipeline with installing the antifouling device didn’t get bio-fouling. The control group had a great deal of biology attached. This means that the device has good antifouling effect.In this paper, an antifouling material was prepared accelerating dissolution rate of copper ions experiments. The prepared material has good antifouling performance. It has a wide application prospect.