Spectrophotometric Study on the Corrosion of Some Steels in HCl, H 2 SO 4 and CH 3 COOH Solutions

The paper presents a kinetic study on the corrosion of 14 types of ATI steels immersed in acid solutions of HCl, H2SO4 and CH3COOH having different concentrations. The iron ions transferred into corrosive solution by anodic dissolution of the steel samples were UV-Vis spectrophotometrically identified and their concentration was determined during different reaction stages. The corrosion process was kinetically characterized by means of an overall rate constant of corrosion reaction, proposed in the present paper as a quantitative parameter which may be used to this purpose. The influence of temperature on the corrosion process was also studied and the values of activation energy (E) were calculated. It can be concluded that the corrosion process is influenced by the chemical nature of the corrosive medium, by the steel composition, as well as by the reaction temperature.