Abstract

This thesis reports the research activity carried out over the last 3 years in the Laboratory of Industrial Corrosion Control at the University of Trento. The subject is related to corrosion control through an organic coating paint system for steel substrates. In other words, it coveres the investigation of anticorrosive pigments as viable alternatives to replace the use of hazardous and toxic substances commonly present into an organic coating paint system and in addition to this, to reduce emissions of volatile organic compounds (VOC), the organic coating paint system itself has been designed to be solvent-free. Much of the work over the development of a water based full paint system containing the environmentally friendly nanoparticles was based on electrochemical techniques. Therefore, the contents within the next pages are divided into three main parts: i) a background about the use of electrochemical techniques for corrosion and corrosion control through organic coatings; ii) the electrochemical investigations of the environmentally friendly anticorrosive pigments; iii) the incorporation into one water based organic coating system. Also, great effort has been spent to understand the mechanisms of the coatings degradation as well as the mechanisms of anticorrosion protection given by the pigments. In this way, the results of interest have been delivered to scientific community via a number of publications in different journals as well as congresses participations. Lastly, the activities in this thesis were supported by the SteelCoat project. SteelCoat was a consortium cooperation project within the EU Seventh Frame Programme (FP7), involving several companies and universities.