Admiralty Tubes 1

You might want to post this question in the Corrosion Engineering, Alloy Engineering, or Metal Engineering forums.

Shmulik,

Is the arsenic dangerous? I don't know what you mean, but I'm sure that if you ate enough arsenical admiralty tubes that you'd get pretty sick. However, I don't think there is any risk handling the tubes. We have arsenical admiralty tubes in one of our condensers, and we have been cleaning the tubes for years and never experienced any problems. I even have a short length of tube here in my office, and I seem to be all right....except for this constant twitch (just kidding). There is such a small amount of arsenic (around 1%) that I don't think it has much effect on humans.

Does the arsenic help with corrosion? Yes, I believe so. I think that the arsenic is the inhibitor. Since the 1960's admiralty brasses have been manufactured with inhibitors. The inhibitors minimize the tendency toward dezincification. Dezincification is the corrosion process that refers to the removal of zinc from the copper/zinc solid that brass is composed of.

How does arsenical admiralty compare to C44300? I think it is pretty much the same thing. I believe the only difference is that C44300 uses tin rather than arsenic as the inhibitor.

Hope this helps.
Waylon