I'm not convinced corrosion under water is any problem at all. Typically problem is fouling from marine growth. That's what toxic anti-fouling paint is for.
Corrosion under water can't really happen as not enough oxygen is there. Over the waterline (and across the ship) - it's different story.
It is lab-tested and nothing beyond this
"""“What has been developed is a dip-coated method—we do not know the strength of this coating and its ability to resist wear and tear in real conditions outside the laboratory, or the commercial viability of the product,” Gosvami says."""
I have another solution: stop shipping so much junk around the world.
Watch the Story of Stuff https://storyofstuff.org/movies/story-of-stuff, the True Cost http://thoughtmaybe.com/the-true-cost, and films like them and it's hard not to conclude that reducing the amount of shipping by 75% or so would improve everyone's lives and Earth's capacity to support life and human society. Some industries would have to adjust -- mainly ones filling landfills and producing greenhouse gases.
The Story of Stuff site has the details, but something like 99% of stuff American's buy ends up in landfills within a year. Go to Craig's List free stuff and you'll see tons of stuff people can't give away every day. Just the tip of the iceberg.
“so far it has been tested only in simulated laboratory
conditions rather than in actual use”
These articles... lemme try one.
Riding to Alpha Centauri on a Pineapple: Scientists' find key inside beloved fruit; eternal life?
question: are there enough mango leaves in India to extract the rust inhibiting compounds?
y'all haters are killjoys too
Fixing iron oxidation is great, my old VW would appreciate it, but I don't see how it helps much... and I'm sure marine coatings have a long history and a lot of technology invested. Wouldn't a systematically-better approach be to do as much local-to-customer, JIT manufacturing and stop shipping finished goods all over the world? If not just for climate-change but for reduced time-to-customer? (Caveat: Still must ship materials and specialized/complex goods that aren't available locally.)
This article is like a game of telephone. The cited study finds that all corrosion of all types worldwide is a 2.5T problem. Shipping is a small fraction of that. Hard to trust the article after such a trivially false statement in the title.
Notably, the economic impact of the entire shipping industry is under 500B [1], which ought to cast doubt over the whole article.
[1] http://www.worldshipping.org/benefits-of-liner-shipping/glob...
Also @dang the article should link to the original at https://www.scidev.net/asia-pacific/r-d/news/mango-leaf-extr...