Accelerated Method Design and Mechanism Analysis on the Corrosion of Tinplate in Anhydrous Ethanol

ABSTRACT Tinplate is an important modern packaging material for medicine and cosmetics products. However, tinplate can be corroded by being etched slowly in anhydrous ethanol solvent. It is urgent that the corrosion behavior and mechanism of tinplate in anhydrous ethanol be investigated. Nowadays, it usually takes at least a month for the observation of tinplate corrosion in anhydrous ethanol. In this article, an accelerated method on the corrosion process of tinplate in anhydrous ethanol is proposed. It is found that after the corrosion of tinplate in anhydrous ethanol by hydrothermal method at 120°C for 10 h, its corrosion behavior is similar to that of tinplate in anhydrous ethanol at room temperature for 30 days. Furthermore, the corrosion mechanism is studied by the corrosion behavior of tinplate in anhydrous ethanol by hydrothermal method at 120°C for 12 h. The result shows that the corrosion of tinplate is caused by acetic acid, which is a product of oxidized ethyl alcohol. The accelerated method proposed in this work is an effective approach for us to explore the corrosion behavior of tinplate in anhydrous ethanol, which is also important to the tinplate application for industries in nowadays.