As part of the design programme by Hales Water Turbines Ltd to provide our customers with turbine unit capable of a long service life with minimal maintenance, the company has started a controlled long term in- house test programme into the best forms of environmentally friendly forms of corrosion prevention.
HWT has teamed up with Greenkote plc and will be conducting trials in both seawater and fresh water using both 304 and 316 grades of stainless steel as the base metals.
It is well known that the greatest area of electro-chemical corrosion occurs at places with mechanical fixings, be it bolts, rivets etc, plus the need for long term protection at minimal cost and environmental impact.
View of the 300mm stainless steel test plates being made ready for deployment
Half of the mechanical fittings placed on the plates will be Greenkote plated to see if this will improve the life cycle of the turbines and other mechanical applications.
( A short description of the Greenkote process supplied by Greenkote PLC )
Greenkote zinc thermal diffusion can be used as an environmentally and commercially interesting alternative for sherardizing, hot-dip galvanizing, electroplating and zinc flakes coatings. It is a dry finish process that utilises fine powder particles to coat specialised engineering alloy/metal surfaces in an environmentally friendly, low infrastructure intensive, batch process and can produce aesthetically pleasing surface thickness as low as 10µm. The finish product is provided with a uniform intermetallic layer. The process alleviates the internal thread penetration problems associated with commonplace electroplating such as the Faradays cage effect, provides enhanced protection against hydrogen embrittlement, can be combined with a top coat and has self-passivation properties. It has a wide scope of capabilities and is applicable to industries including but not limited to; Construction, Marine, Mining, Automotive, Rubber moulding, Renewables and Power transmission.
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