Harmful Effects of Corrosion on the Economy
In simple terms, corrosion is a natural process that involves the degradation of various materials due to their interactions with their surrounding environment — and the corrosion of materials like metal is inevitable.
Corrosion Effects
The effects of corrosion have significantly impacted our daily lives in both direct and indirect ways. In a straightforward sense, corrosion can damage our possessions of everyday use, such as metal appliances, charcoal grills, furniture kept outdoors, and parts of automobiles. In contrast, breakdown also occurs in places we cannot see, such as the corrosion of reinforced steel bars in concrete. At any time, they can cause a failure of a section of a road, bring damage to buildings and other vital structures. Consequently, this results in exposed danger to the public’s safety and massive economic loss.
Moreover, the effects of corrosion go even further and occur in industrial plants such as electrical power plants or chemical power plants, both being some of the most dangerous places for corrosion to take place. Some of the consequences of corrosion in these environments include the shutdown of equipment exposed to corrosion, replacing corroded equipment, efficiency loss, and temporary preventive measures like painting.
Some of these consequences can have social effects as well. For example, eroded materials can cause pollution, which can be harmful to one’s health. Sudden explosions from equipment failure can put people nearby at risk of being stuck under the collapse of the building or to harmful toxins that emit from the corroded equipment.
Corrosion Costs
According to a report by the NACE International’s IMPACT, it was found that the numbers of economic impact due to corrosion were startling. In 2013, the global cost of corrosion was estimated to be around $2.5 trillion, being equivalent to approximately 3.4% global GDP.
Moreover, using control practices to prevent corrosion, savings between 15% to 35% for the cost of corrosion have been realized — and what was shocking to note that these expenses didn’t not the environmental costs or individual safety.
Reza Javaherdashti — Revitalizing Hope in the Darkest of Times
Despite the struggles we are facing, there are still many ways we can suppress the effects of corrosion and implement a better change in our economy. Reza Javaherdashti is an Australian-Iranian author and researcher who has been training his focus on microbiology influences corrosion (MIC).
In 2002, he authored his book in Persian about corrosion management, which was published by the Iranian Gas Company, and it was in the following year his international work regarding corrosion knowledge management was published. In 2014, he also studied the possibility of using the principle of Future Studies in order to accommodate corrosion that involved a long-term management plan in which his future studies play a critical role.
His published works have been high acclaimed over the years, and since 2020, Javaherdashti has been the General Manager at Eninco Engineering B.V. in the Netherlands. He is the Director at Parscorrosion and a Lead Corrosion Advisor for various companies responsible for offering various services related to the root cause analysis and troubleshooting via corrosion management since 2008. We have come a long way in managing corrosion cases thanks to the published works and efforts of Reza Javaherdashti, and we believe in a future where he can lead us to an economy that no longer as to suffer from the effects of corrosion.