Enhancing the Teaching of Corrosion to Chemical-Engineering Students through Laboratory Experiments

Abstract

This work presents a laboratory to help chemical-engineering students understand the basic concepts of corrosion. This laboratory has been performed since academic year 2011–2012 in the framework of the subject “Design of equipment and installations” for the third year of the Chemical Engineering Degree of the University of Castilla–La Mancha (Spain). It is based on calculating the corrosion rates of six different samples in order to evaluate the effects of the corrosion environment, the material of the sample, and the application of corrosion-prevention methods. The performance of the laboratory to enhance the teaching–learning methodology was evaluated by asking the students to answer a test before and after completing the laboratory. The results show that the laboratory improves the understanding of the students and also their confidence in their answers, although room for improvement was found in relation to the application of corrosion-prevention methods, for which corrective actions are proposed.