Novel green manufacture of metallic aluminum coatings on carbon steel by sol-gel method.

Industrial processes for fabricating hot-dipping aluminum coatings on carbon steels involve problems related to equipment complexity, environmental issues and high energy consumption. To address these problems, a novel method for manufacturing metallic aluminum coating on carbon steel Q235 at room temperature by sol-gel method was developed in this work. Both the single-layer coating (47 μm) and the double-layer coating (97 μm) specimens were prepared by spraying some aqueous silica sol slurries containing spherical and flaky micro metallic aluminum powders on the steel surface at room temperature and then drying them at 50 °C.