Имбаша-ла-ша-ла-ла-ла

Why don’t oil rigs rust in the sea? In truth they do rust, but nowhere near as fast as they would if it weren’t for one very elegant solution that protects them. There is an engineering philosophy here of sacrificial protection. Corrosion is an aggressive and destructive force, so what if you offer the corrosion gods a sacrifice to satiate their appetite for destruction and to spare your important things? Behold the Subsea Anode! Subsea anodes are large blocks of aluminium that weigh maybe 1-2 tonnes each and you will see this welded onto subsea or underwater equipment and they’re kinda odd and inexplicable looking. But what these aluminium anodes do, is to create a galvanic electrical current between the aluminium, the steel and the sea. Electricity actually flows through these things once they are in the water and has the effect of protecting the corrosion of the steel by flooding the sea with free aluminium ions. As a result the aluminium anodes slowly dissolve away, but these huge 30,000 tonne steel structures can stand in the sea for 40-50 years without rusting. So that’s the secret. It’s a gloriously simple solution, to a very challenging existential problem for the offshore industry. You just have to make your sacrifice to nature, and she lets you pass.