Evaporation of Electrolyte During SVET Measurements: The Scale of the Problem and the Solutions

Abstract

The objective of this work is to investigate the scale of the effect of spontaneous solution evaporation during SVET (Scanning Vibrating Electrode Technique) measurements and demonstrate how it biases the final results. When SVET maps are continuously acquired for more than several hours, the measured currents are smaller than expected. This is attributed to solvent (typically water) evaporation which leads to an increase in solution conductivity over time. If this is not considered when converting the measured potential differences into the local current densities, the SVET results display currents smaller than the true ones. Here, this effect is studied with a platinum disk electrode as source of a constant current and a model corroding system consisting of the AA2024/CFRP galvanic couple. Corrective actions are proposed to mitigate the problem, either in the experimental set-up or as numerical correction.