•  On Jul, 07, 2019
•  admin
•   Detergent, Surface Cleaning

Metal rust stain is definitely one of the tedious challenging contaminate which many users are facing.  Many studies have proven that rust will deteriorate the metal properties exponentially.  In order to prolong the metal life span, user has to apply many difference coating to protect the metal being oxidizing.

In DST, we have encountered many special requests to provide dedicate solution to remove the metal rust surface effectively without sacrificing the metal surface.  This never been an easy job to us.  Through our assignment, we have accumulated many experiences on dealing with various metal materials and metal surfaces.  We are here to work with you on removing the challenge rusty surface.

What is Rust?

Let us talk about rust, and what it is.  Before we go into rust, I would like to talk about “corrosion”.  Corrosion is a phenomenon always encounter on iron surface.  This is due to the metal alloy being oxidized through a natural process.  The metal alloy who exposed to moisture in the air is the root cause for corrosion effect, and the acidity rain will further expedite the corrosion effect. 

The corrosion effect on iron alloy, we normally named it as rust.

Rust is an oxidizing surface on iron surface.  The rust normally comes into 2 categories:

1. Red Colour Rust.  This is the resultant for iron alloy react with oxygen.  In chemistry, the red colour rust could be the form of iron oxide or iron-hydroxide.
2. Green Colour Rust.  In some occasion with the deprive of oxygen elements, the iron may corroded with Chloride.  This is commonly seen on iron surface covered by concrete.

Rust Formation Criteria

We always are asked by many readers why fresh iron metal surface will quickly get corroded if no proper protective layer or passivation layer is being coated on the surface.  Let me introduce and share with you how the rust being formed.  The fresh iron metal will quickly start corroded while

1. Fresh iron expose to air
2. Expose to water moisture
3. Corrode even faster in salty condition

In order to prevent corrosion effect, the industry has developed several actions to cover up the fresh iron surface, this include

1. Galvanize
2. Coating
3. Painting
4. Apply passive layer with corrosion inhibitor

Why Rust will deteriorate the Iron Properties

Rust is a red colour oxide layer come in porous texture on iron surface.  Some serious rusty surface may appears with flaky piece which very much corrode the iron metal.  The rust or iron oxide is bringing some adverse effect to the iron:

1. Change of micro structure. Oxide comes in larger by volume than the iron metal, in this case, the iron may encounter larger structural expansion force which affect the structure.
2. Weakening metal properties.  The oxide compound is weaker than the original iron metal.
3. Surface peel off.  Flaky piece may peel off from time to time.  After the drop off of flaky rust, the internal fresh iron exposes to air and continue the corrosion process until the entire iron is consumed.

We encounter rusty surface everyday and hopefully this article will help you to understand why rust on metal already becomes a great challenge in our daily life.  In subsequence article, we are going to explain how we could remove the metal rust stain effectively.