ABSTRACT
This chapter presents a novel non-destructive method to measure the actual corrosion rate of precorroded metal objects, such as historical and archaeological artefacts. The slope of the oxygen curves from all in situ measurements have been estimated using linear regression and corrected for the blind consumption in order to compensate for the amount of oxygen used to oxidise the epoxy. For comparison, the results for the precorroded cast iron (Fe) show a larger variation, which is probably due to the heterogeneous nature of the metal surface. A better correlation is found when comparing the oxygen consumption and the amount of Fe in the stripping solution as measured by flame atomic adsorption spectroscopy. The oxygen consumption measured for the precorroded samples cannot be compared to a weight loss, as a stripping solution would dissolve all corrosion products on the samples and not only the products formed during the oxygen measurements.
