Hou Baorong
(Institute of Oceanology Chinese Acadamy of Science, Qingdao 266071, China)
With the development of marine oil and gas exploration, more and more attention has been given to marine corrosive environment during the last decades. Marine corrosion environments are generally divided into atmospheric, splash, tidal, immersion, and mud zones. The protection against splash zone corrosion should be conducted with high priority. Aside from seawater that causes normal marine corrosion, other factors such as temperature variations, tidal action, wave impacts, man-made pollutants, sufficient oxygen (O2), ultraviolet rays, and salt spray that continually washes upon objects, cause severe corrosion damage in the splash zone. Note that rust self-oxidation greatly account for the corrosion of steel structures in the splash zone. PTC is the most useful technology to protect the steel in splash zone.