What is corrosion costing your company

Depending on where you look the cost of corrosion is estimated to be around 4% of South Africa’s gross domestic product (GDP) equating to about R 250 to R348 billion. But the distribution of this staggering number of losses is not evenly distributed because as we all know rust is accelerated in coastal areas.

An interesting study published in the South African journal of science took a very hands-on approach, the scientists behind the report placed mild steel plates all over the country left them there for 12 months, cleaned and weighed them to calculate the corrosion on this chart.

The diagram shows the amount of corrosion in microns per year of mild steel

Map showing high corrosion areas in South africa

This chart shows actual measurements of specific locations around south Africa  

Chart of locations and corrosion in micron per year

The conclusion was that the worst areas of corrosion where within 150 meters from the coastline and it drops off dramatically as much as 80 % from there onwards depending on wind and sea spray. There are a few standout areas - The western cape has the highest corrosion with 460 micro per annum at Melkbosstrand and the Karoo and Kalahari Desert the lowest with De Aar only having 2 micro per annum and Droërivier 1.5 micro per annum. Durban Also experienced high corrosion in Sailsbury Island and Congella .

The question is are you doing enough to protect your assets.  

The article is linked below and is a good read if you want to get into the finer details of the report.

The full article is linked here: https://sajs.co.za/article/view/4901/7962

Reference:

 Janse van Rensburg DT, Cornish LA, Van der Merwe J. Corrosion map of South Africa’s macro atmosphere. S Afr J Sci. 2019;115(7/8), Art. #4901, 8 pages. https://doi. org/10.17159/sajs.2019/4901