The American Society of Civil Engineers (ASE ) rates USA with a D as corrosion cost the US economy nearly $300 billion per year. Water in the air or atmosphere & oxygen gas or O2 a component of air, readily gives up electrons to metal ions that dissociate & form metal oxides or rust or corrosion.
Chloride ions from salt or NaCl applied for deicing, also readily corrode metals by donating electrons to the metal ions, allowing them to form metal chlorides. Body sweat contains chloride ions that will corrode a EDC weapon if its not protected from corrosion with surface treatments, coatings, electroplating, carburizing, nitro-carburizing, parkerizing or similar anti-corrosion layers.
Iron Rust
Iron or Fe particularly prone to rusting because its valence electron shell readily accepts electrons from oxygen with water acting like a catalyst. Salt or NaCl & especially salt water similarly enhances the corrosion of iron because of the Cl- ion which will also readily donate electrons to form iron chloride, by corroding iron ions out of the surfaces of iron parts, notably applied in bridges, roads, dams, airports, & a bewildering array of other applications where the cheap compact strength of iron & steel alloys of iron with other elements offers unmatched performance per cost ratios. Sadly, iron rusts easily, causing the rebar in reinforced concrete to degenerating into rust over time, shortening the useful life of concrete, the artificial semi-liquid pourable rock of industrial development.
Railroads
The rail-cars, the rail tracks, the locomotive engine & most of everything else on the train made of iron & steel alloys, prone to rusting or corrosion by air or salt water or just water & oxygen from the weather & atmosphere of Earth in the Biosphere near the ground surface where roads & railways are typically located.
Cars Rusting Away
Holes, pitting, chipping, cracks, gaps, seams, scaling & worse in areas where the paint damaged by unintended impacts, accidents or similar. Up-spray or road mist from winter roads treated with salt, sitting wet on the underside of the car where the wet salty water will find a way to any exposed steel or iron & start pitting it with rust corrosion damage. In America, over $23 billion in annual vehicle corrosion expenses occurs mostly because of rock salt being applied during winter weather as a cheap deicer, when a more expensive less corrosive deicer commercially available- but 30x more costly; calcium magnesium acetate. That over $100 per driver, per year, in America, just in corrosion loses. Think holes in the floor boards, suspension components failing, brake rotors rusting & similar. 16 million tons of rock salt applied to American' roadways each winter.
Iron being abundant in Earth's mantel crust layer near the ground surface, makes it cheaper to produce & its produced on a massive gigaton scale annually for making iron & steel alloys of many different grades. Automakers notable use many different grade of steel in stamping lines to produce parts for the body shell of modern cars & SUV's. Zinc dipping & enamel & lacquer & polyurethane & even acrylic primers & paints are typically spray coating in multiple even layers over the body of a vehicle or its panels or support structures to enhance the appearance & provide protection against corrosion to enhance the functional real world life of the vehicle in terms of calendar life.
Engines, like typical gasoline vehicle engines will last from 100 to 10000 hrs, mostly ~3500 hours of operation before a major overall required, that can cost more than the depreciated market value of a vehicle near the end of life or EOL, when the car or SUV fully depreciated. Few people are going to pay a mechanic $125/hr to refurbish a mass produce non-collectable older vehicle, when the restoration including engine & tranny repairs, vastly exceeds the recoverable sale price value of the used vehicle. So lets say you have a car that was $40,000 to buy upfront. You drive it for 12 years & now its worth $3000, but needs $8000 (new tranny & engine over-haul, complete teardown disassembly of the drive-train, new piston rings, new crank bearings, re-machining of the head, cam shafts, new valves etc, new water pump, new oil pump, new crank sensor, etc, etc) Who in their right mind going to dump $8k into a depreciating $3k residual value vehicle, that would be upside down by more than 2X, almost 3X.
Oil pipelines
Salt water, other metals salts, acids from the fracking solutions & acid rain, even acids present in the oil itself, depending on the grade of oil, these all have corrosive effects on pipelines, especially noteworthy the extremely costly long distance oil pipelines uses to ship crude oil between vastly distant locals.
Sea water, chemical solutions, acids
An electrochemical reaction occurring naturally with most metals. Water electrically conductive & this allows electrons to donate to the valence or outer shell orbital of metal atoms in crystal lattice formations in common metals like iron (metals are crystalline most of the time)(with lattice boundaries, grain sizes, ion diffusion of other elements in alloys, etc). When the electrons from water interact with the metal, an ion + of that metal forms, its outer shell now complete, it dissociates from its neighboring metal atoms & enters the water solution as an ion. Oxygen in the water or air makes this happen more readily & notably forms iron oxide or rust as water rich mixes of oxygen readily corrodes iron. Chloride ion from salt, notable on winter roads treated with salt & from sea water, are extra corrosive with both oxygen & chloride giving up electrons that corrode the metal.
Acids that readily corrode metals are notoriously hard on most metals. Sulfuric & hydrochloric & nitric acid, especially concentrated solutions of these acids, will readily corrode or dissolve most metals, especially when mixed with hydrogen peroxide or as mixtures of acids.
Iron Ore
Iron oxide, reddish colored ore common near the surface of earth where mining activity takes the iron oxide & then puts it into a reducing iron smelting furnace where the high heat energy converts the iron oxide to metallic iron, pig iron, after which other elements like silicon & chromium & nickel are added to make steel alloys, after most of the carbon burned out of the iron. The alloying of iron with other elements produces many hundreds of grades of steels, notable stainless steels that are vastly more resistant to rusting than pure iron.
Gold & Platinum
Noble metals like gold & platinum have stable electron shells so they do not readily accept electrons from chloride or oxygen, so in performance applications where exceptional corrosion resistance valuable, platinum or gold are typically electroplated onto palladium which was plated on steel or nickel or copper or silver. In electrical connectors like charging cable tips with sliding electrical contacts, gold plating very common, onto a nickel electrical contact thats soldered or crimped onto a copper, typically stranded flexible wire.
Copper
Oxygen free copper cables are the most popular, with gold plated end contacts. Cell phone batteries & electronic pins on CPU chips & other RAM modules, similarly electroplating with gold for long life corrosion resistance, since hot operation would readily corrode pure copper to form oxide patina, that green rust that people love the appearance of on antique building & other decorative irons made of pure copper. I wear a copper bracelet & necklace to impart green copper corrosion products that form with my body sweat, for the anti-inflammatory performance of such jewelry, known since antiquity before the introduction of small molecule drugs like ibuprofen became widely commercially available.
Failing Iron Infrastructure
Most infrastructure made with iron because iron cheap & strong, relative to other metals. The relative abundance of iron near the surface of Earth makes mining it, notably in Australia, easier & cheaper than other metal mining practices, like those of rare earths. This makes iron corrosion extremely costly to the USA & other developed nations with lots of iron based bridges & infrastructure supports.
The I-35W bridge collapse in Minneapolis, MN in, August 1st 2007 shows the devastating catastrophic collapse that can occur when an iron based bridge not maintained properly to prevent dangerous corrosion from eating away the supports, weakening the structure to the point where common wind & vehicle loading overwhelm it into mechanically breaking in a fast failure mode that is often deadly to motorists traveling on such failing roads & costly to the municipality that has to clean up & scrap out the old bridge parts & then pay to build a new bridge.
Nothing Lasts Forever
Infrastructure, like all other things, has a lifespan, & corrosion shortens the lifespan. Thats why the bridges & similar are typically painted with long life outdoor coatings & paints & sprays, oils & films, ^ other corrosion inhibiting or rust preventing surface treatments. Even when maintained, the infrastructure still eventually fails, but it can last many hundreds of years if properly maintained to nearly eliminate or tightly limit corrosion or rusting. Even the Sun will eventually burn out. The Earth has a finite life too, as a planet.
Sewer & Water Pipes
Waste water typically both acidic & corrosive, stomach acid & similar organic acids in foods & poop that enter sewage, make a thick stew of sewer fluids & solid that scrape & grind & erode & rust the sewer pipe from the inside out. Potable water pipes & similar water pipelines that deliver domestic & irrigation waters, at hydro dams & in municipal water systems. It will cost more than $1 trillion to fix America's aging pipeline systems to prevent catastrophic failures. These system were never intended to last forever & much of the wealth of America was exported to buy crude oil to make transportation fuels, gasoline, diesel & jet A mostly, to support energy wasteful emissions heavy lifestyles of extravagant excess & frivolous energy consumption, known as a 6kw per person, 24/7 HDI high level or high level of human development typically of advanced nations, though not all are the same.
High Human Development Energy Consumption
In Switzerland, a typical Swiss household uses 1/3 the energy of a similar American household, by a more insulated home with higher efficiency fixtures & appliances, while enjoying a higher standard of living, universal healthcare & other benefits of their advanced Swiss social focused government, where the USA spends most of its wealth on oil & weapons, while investing less in citizen benefits & programs to maintain or fix or replace failure rusting corroding infrastructure. The problem attenuated by outsource & similar export of value added industries abroad in globalization, significantly during the 1970's & afterward as a shift towards a service based economy happening, along with currency inflation or devaluation of the oversaturated pool of fiat currency known as the USD or dollar, which like other currencies & cryptocurrencies, exists as bits in computer networks, clouds & internet, debit & credit servers at banks. Physical currency like printed notes & coins only a small single digit percentage of the $11 trillion annual GPD of America.
Department of Defense Sea Water Corrosion
280 ships & 3700 aircraft in the US Navy need a lot or rust remove & corrosion reduction support & contribute significantly to the maintenance costs that the Pentagon must fork over to keep this system running smoothly with tactical performance ensured. With a global reach, this network of assets helps to promote global security & economic stability to the entire world. A mostly peace keeping force with good offensive & defensive capabilities, humanitarian relief the major operation paradigm to keep all the personal fit & in good form so they are ready for tactical action in a time of war or to support other nations like the Ukraine, from the unethical invasion from Russia in March 2022, for example. A whole fleet of mothballed rust buckets still floating, will never see action again because they are too weakened by corrosion & out of date, past their prime, just as we do not typically see elderly people competing in the olympics. (no agism implied or otherwise suggested) everyone has something to add to life, if they make an effort, anyone can add value to any situation or circumstance. Relics from as far back as the 1940's, they are great models for analysis of what sea water does to naval vessels. Reserve ships or the ghost fleet, some of them can be made battle ready with a refurbish reload refuel program to give. function to the antiques, in support roles or other value added operations. Corrosion costs the Pentagon up to $20 billion in annual loses, more than the entire defense budget of other developed nations.
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