Metal corrosion costs the world approximately $2.5T (2016) every year, with the US alone spending around $635B (2018) annually to deal with the problem, a figure that doubles when including indirect costs. Corrosion also contributes to the loss of structural integrity of metal structures, which poses a risk to human safety and the surrounding environment. Protective coatings provide the first line of defense against the deleterious effects of corrosion. However, current solutions do not last long enough, especially in highly corrosive environments. Coating performance can be enhanced by incorporation of corrosion inhibitors. Current corrosion inhibitors are based on heavy metals, most notably chromates and zinc compounds, which are highly hazardous to humans and the environment and subject to ever more stringent regulations.

SynMatter, a minority, woman-owned small business, has invented, Smart Particles, a completely new class of environmentally benign, smart corrosion inhibitors, that deliver high anticorrosion performance to protective coatings. With the support of NSF Small Business Innovation Research funding, the company was able to substantially derisk the technology, demonstrate its commercial viability and show the high levels of corrosion protection performance that can be achieved.

This involved optimizing the synthesis, which lowered production costs by at least 25%. This optimized method was scaled ten-fold, demonstrating commercial production readiness. The company developed extensive expertise in incorporating Smart Particles into coatings and made approximately 280 different paint formulations with 9 different coatings, coated over 2000 panels of which 960 were tested in 36 different corrosion test runs.

Extensive corrosion testing was performed on coatings applied to metals, following ASTM standards. ASTM B117 salt spray testing was used to screen Smart Particles formulations and show intra-test performance. To demonstrate performance in real-life environments, accelerate industry adoption and for marketing, atmospheric exposure testing was conducted at NASA Kennedy Space Center’s Beachside Atmospheric Exposure Test Site, a world-leading and world-renowned independent corrosion test site whose test results are regarded highly in the coatings industry.

Results from this testing showed that Smart Particles enhance the corrosion protection performance and lifetime of multiple protective coating systems substantially. While it is notoriously difficult to quantify the performance of anticorrosion coatings, Smart Particles have the potential to increase their lifetime by up to two-fold. Doubling the lifetimes extends maintenance cycles and reduces asset lifetime maintenance costs by up to 50%. In the example of just one large offshore oil and gas platform, this could deliver tens of millions of dollars in savings to its owners.

As SynMatter was able to demonstrate in this project, Smart Particles will dramatically improve protective coatings which in turn will improve structural safety, reduce maintenance frequency and lengthen the operating lifetimes of metal assets that are essential to the US economy, and do so in human and environmentally friendly manner. Through extensive market research and customer discovery, SynMatter has identified a significant need for such new, high performance corrosion inhibitors in the protective coatings market. Based on the derisked technology and high performance, the next steps for the company involve partnering with manufacturers, distributors and end users to push Smart Particles products into the protective coatings market. The team thanks NSF for its trust, funding and support.

Last Modified: 06/12/2024
Modified by: Xuejun Zhang