Views: 0 Author: Site Editor Publish Time: 2025-09-26 Origin: Site
In modern industry and in the daily maintenance of metal products, corrosion prevention remains a crucial issue. Metal corrosion not only degrades equipment performance and shortens its service life, but can also lead to safety incidents, causing numerous inconveniences and losses in production and daily life. Aluminum paste, a high-performance metallic pigment, is emerging in the corrosion prevention field with its unique properties, becoming a "metal guardian" that protects metals.
Aluminum paste is primarily composed of flake-shaped aluminum particles and petroleum solvent in a paste-like form. The aluminum flakes have a smooth surface, a concentrated particle size distribution, and a regular shape, resulting in excellent light reflectivity and a metallic luster. These properties enable aluminum paste to play a multifaceted role in corrosion prevention applications.
From a physical protection perspective, aluminum paste consists of tiny, scaly particles at the microscopic level, allowing for uniform dispersion within paint systems. Its unique flaky structure allows it to form a dense physical barrier within the coating. When external corrosive media such as oxygen, moisture, and acidic gases attempt to penetrate the coating and erode the metal substrate, aluminum paste particles block their penetration paths. Through multi-layered reflection and scattering, the diffusion time it takes for the corrosive media to reach the metal surface is significantly prolonged, significantly improving the coating's corrosion resistance. For example, in the marine industry, the waterline is a severely corrosive area. While normal corrosion on a ship is typically 0.2mm per year, corrosion at the interface can reach as high as 1.0mm. Applying aluminum paste to marine coatings can effectively mitigate this severe corrosion and reduce the loss rate of ships. Using anti-corrosion coatings containing aluminum paste in areas such as ship ballast tanks creates a strong protective film, preventing corrosive media like seawater from eroding the metal substrate.
In industrial settings, aluminum paste is even more effective. Metal piping in chemical plants, in addition to facing conventional environmental corrosion factors, must also withstand direct chemical attack and harsh conditions such as high temperature and high humidity. Aluminum paste not only enhances the coating's physical barrier properties, but its aluminum content also undergoes a synergistic chemical reaction with the galvanized layer and certain components of the paint, forming a more stable chemical bond at the interface between the coating and the metal substrate, enhancing the coating's adhesion and cohesion. This ensures the coating maintains its integrity despite stresses such as mechanical friction and thermal expansion and contraction, improving its wear and weather resistance, and providing reliable assurance for the stable operation of industrial equipment.
Aluminum paste also provides an electrochemical protection mechanism. As an active metal, aluminum preferentially oxidizes in corrosive environments, protecting the less active metal substrate in contact. This sacrificial anodic protection provides an additional barrier to the metal substrate.
With advances in materials science, the performance of aluminum paste is continuously improving. Specialty aluminum pastes, such as resin-coated aluminum paste, are now available on the market. Resin-coated aluminum paste consists of a core of fine aluminum flakes coated with a resin material. This coating provides inert protection for the aluminum flakes, preventing oxidation and corrosion to a certain extent. It also boasts exceptional acid and alkali resistance, excellent weather resistance, and superior electrical insulation. It is widely used in high-end industrial finishes, such as mobile phone and appliance exterior paints, UV primers, architectural exterior coatings, coil coatings, wheel coatings, and insulating coatings.
Aluminum paste plays a particularly important role in corrosion protection in wet-dry environments on ships. Ballast tanks and other areas of a ship are particularly susceptible to corrosion due to their long-term exposure to wet-dry environments. Silver Arrow aluminum paste is made from high-purity nitrogen-atomized aluminum powder. It contains very low levels of heavy metals, particularly water-reactive metals like iron, thus preserving the integrity of the paint film and minimizing the risk of corrosion. The aluminum flakes feature neat edges and a uniform diameter-to-thickness ratio. The aluminum powder is dense and highly resistant to shear forces during mixing, preventing breakage and deformation. This maximizes hiding power, resulting in a smoother, more even paint film that is less susceptible to defects and extends the life of the paint.
Aluminum paste, with its advantages in physical and electrochemical protection, as well as its continuous innovation and performance enhancements, offers a new solution for metal corrosion protection. In the future, aluminum paste is expected to play an even more important role in the corrosion protection field, safeguarding the long-term and stable operation of metal products.