Kinetics and mechanism of corrosion of laboratory hot briquetted iron

Abstract

While considerable work has been reported in the literature on the corrosion behavior and products of direct reduced iron and sponge iron, very little has been published on hot briquetted iron (HBI). The present article reports the kinetics and mechanism of HBI corrosion. As corrosion is an electrochemical process, measurements using electrochemical techniques have been made and these are compared to data gained by measuring mass changes in the briquettes over time. Similar trends were seen in data from both techniques, and the corrosion extent predicted by electrochemical measurements in saline solution was very close to the mass gain result obtained. Kinetic analysis of the data from mass gain over time trials was conducted. The activation energy for corrosion at temperatures between 25 degrees C and 80 degrees C has been calculated. The values of activation energy obtained indicate that corrosion was predominantly controlled by diffusion of oxygen in the liquid state. The internal structure of the briquettes was observed by microscopy both before and after corrosion in distilled water.