My college room mate dated a girl whose name was something like "Galvanizo" - claimed her grand-father or great-g-father invented the process.
Take a bunch of zinc and melt it down. Add some other chemicals and then dip (hot-dip) the (cleaned) parts in the melted zinc concoction. Pull them out. Let them cool. Looks pretty!!
Record of zinc usage in construction began in 79 AD, which could be considered the origination of galvanizing. However, the first recorded history of galvanizing dates back to 1742 when a French chemist named P.J. Malouin, in a presentation to the French Royal Academy, described a method of coating iron with molten zinc.
In 1772, Luigi Galvani, galvanizing’s namesake, discovered the electrochemical process that takes place between metals during an experiment with frog legs. And in 1801, Alessandro Volta furthered the research on galvanizing when he discovered the electropotential between two metals, creating a corrosion cell.
In 1829, Michael Faraday discovered zinc’s sacrificial action during an experiment involving zinc, salt water, and nails. Shortly after, in 1837, French engineer Stanislaus Tranquille Modeste Sorel took out a patent for the early galvanizing process. By 1850, the British galvanizing industry was consuming 10,000 tons of zinc annually for the production of galvanized steel.
The United States, slightly behind, had its first galvanizing plant open in 1870. At the time, the steel was hand dipped in the zinc bath. Today, over 600,000 tons of zinc is consumed annually in North America to produce hot-dip galvanized steel.
You have to be careful as to the type of zinc that you can use. My company had excess zinc powder that we would be use for zinc coating. I contacted a local hot dip galvanizing plant to see if they could use it and unfortunately it could not because the zinc powder had an ingredient not compatible for their hot dip galvanizing operation.
Years ago we had to collect a sample of some wastewater in a 55 gallon drum. The Department of Ecology felt this was a good way to get a representative sample of that particular waste stream. I got a plastic 55 gallon drum and told the guys to cut the top off and pour the waste in that. They decided it would be a lot easier and simpler if they went and got a funnel and just poured the waste in the hole through the funnel. They got a lovely, large, galvanized funnel. The waste stream had some oxidizer and some caustic in it. When the analysis came back it showed the waste stream as being extremely high in lead and zinc. This was rather a surprise to me as we didn't use any lead or zinc.
We finally got it sorted out. But that's what makes me think there is sometimes lead in the hot tip galvanizing process.
