Influence of phosphate pretreatment on durability of zinc‐rich paints Available to Purchase

Corrosion protection efficiency of any protective system depends not only on the nature and quality of the coating system used but also on the condition of the mrface on which it is to be applied. Various metal cleaning methods include (a) chemical cleaning — solvent degreasing, alkali cleaning and acid pickling (b) mechanical cleaning — shot blasting and (c) chemical conversion coatings — phosphating. Several of the recent advances in the field of prepaint treatment of steel have had as an objective the provision of an intrinsically fine, compact, well adhered zinc phosphate coating. Studies in this direction have been carried out in Central Building Research Institute, Roorkee and conditions for a suitable phosphating process have been optimised. Some work on the development of zinc rich paints based on both inorganic as well as organic binders have already been reported. The study has been extended by evaluating the performance of these zinc rich coatings on phosphated steel panels. In this report the performance of the above mentioned coatings when applied on the phosphated steel panels have been discussed. The studies reported include the preparation of the phosphated mild steel panels having three levels of coating wight ranging between 1.5–7.5 g/m2 (obtained by varying only the immersion time and keeping other parameters similar). A cost of zinc rich paint (75m?) based on either sodium silicate or chlorinated rubber binder was then applied on these panels along with the unphosphated ones. Comparison of the corrosion protection efficiency of the various systems thus obtained was carried out by using both laboratory and accelerated laboratory tests as well as by outdoor exposure studies. The performance of the coatings on phosphated panels has been remarkedly satisfactory as compared to the unphosphated panels. This is particularly so when the coating weight of the phosphate layer is between 4.5–7.5 g/m2; there is not any marked difference in the performance of paints applied on a phosphated layer with a coating weight of about 1.5 g/m2 as compared to the unphosphated panels.