PourPy 2.0 – A next generation solver to generate electrochemical stability diagrams

Please check whether enrolling in this project is possible by directly contacting the responsible supervisor(s) indicated below as soon as possible. Note that although we announce many topics, we won't be able to offer all of them simultaneously due to limited lab capacity.

Just weeks before the outbreak of WWII, Marcel Pourbaix defended his doctoral thesis on metal corrosion and the interrelation between potential and pH in dilute aqueous solutions. It was rejected. Today, the graphical representation of this interrelation, the potential-pH or better known as Pourbaix diagram prevails as a simple and powerful tool to predict the corrosion state of metals.

Despite their simplicity and inherent usefulness, there are very few software packages out there that are capable of generating Pourbaix diagrams. In this project, students are working towards the creation of such a tool by implementing the underlying thermodynamic equations making up the Pourbaix diagram in Python (example diagram, see below).

Don’t worry, it is just straight lines, very useful straight lines that, if computed correctly, could tell us if steel in concrete starts to corrode. The project aims to continue the work of previous students, who have successfully developed and published an initial version of PourPy in the programming language Python (https://joss.theoj.org/papers/10.21105/joss.06536). Supervisors are available for an informal discussion about the project.