News

Last year EK received a few reports of excessive staining in EK products and also some reports of corrosion.
EK lab therefore undertook laboratory testing to investigate these occurrences and the results both confirmed the reports and demonstrated how the staining and corrosion could be avoided. The tests showed that only coolants with anti-corrosive additive keep water blocks clean, corrosion free and easy to maintain in the long run. Using other coolants, such as distilled water, with or without algicide, will result in staining, pitting and ultimately corrosion of the blocks. The report includes pictures of all the test results, clearly illustrating the significant benefits of using an anti-corrosion additive.

How does it come to that?
1. Distilled water is great coolant at first, but quickly becomes increasingly polluted, inevitably resulting in staining.
2. In the loop there are different metals with different electrode potentials. Galvanic corrosion (called dissimilar metal corrosion) is the process by which metals in contact with each other oxidize or corrode. There are three conditions that must exist for galvanic corrosion to occur.
a. First there must be two electrochemically dissimilar metals present.
b. Second, there must be an electrically conductive path between the two metals.
c. And third, there must be a conductive path for the metal ions to move from the more anodic metal to the more cathodic metal. (Distilled water becomes proportionally very conductive over time, compared to initial values and features.)
If any one of these three conditions does not exist, galvanic corrosion will not occur.

Please, find full report at this link.

We would like to appeal to all users which want to have long lasting pride and joy in their projects to start using quality coolants with anti-corrosion additive. Several coolants performed well in the tests, and are recommended. You can see the test results for the coolants in this report.

If there are any questions or suggestions we are here to listen, discuss and help.