Forget Acid Rain: Electrically Charged Raindrops Can Corrode Metal in a Way We Never Knew About - ScienceAlert
Researchers at the Max Planck Institute have discovered that electrically charged raindrops can cause corrosion in metal coatings through dielectric breakdown. This previously overlooked mechanism may explain accelerated degradation in infrastructure, vehicles, and cultural heritage sites.
Why it matters
Understanding this corrosion process could lead to the development of more durable protective coatings for critical infrastructure and consumer goods.
Add ScienceAlert on Google (Artem Hvozdkov/Moment/Getty Images) Metals everywhere need to be protected from corrosion , from beloved cars to iconic buildings , sculptures, and ships.
However, according to new research, there's a source of corrosion we didn't know about – and haven't been accounting for.
That source is electrically charged water. Water can get charged in many ways, from passing through a thundercloud to sliding across different surfaces.
Knowing that water can both become charged and corrode metal, researchers from the Max Planck Institute for Polymer Research in Germany wanted to see if there might be a connection.
The team's experiments showed that water carrying an electrical charge could create holes in a conventional protective coating on copper through an intense electrical process known as dielectric breakdown .
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