THE KUWAIT ENVIRONMENT AND ITS EFFECTS ON ELECTRONIC MATERIALS AND COMPONENTS

Materials and electronic equipment can suffer degradation in exposed locations in extreme but not uncommon episodic events such as war, volcanoes, forest fires, and hurricanes. To assess the possible consequences of a recent event of this type, we have deployed, recovered, and analyzed indoor and out door samples from several sites in the vicinity of the Kuwait oil well fires for the period April 21-July 6, 1991. The samples consisted of electronic connectors and high-purity metals exposed for periods of 4-7 weeks. Most of the retrieved metal and connector samples, including those exposed inside many of the equipment shelters, show evidence of significant degradation. The degradation is determined to be due to four factors; deposition of conductive soot from the fires, corrosion by reduced sulfur gases released from the uncapped wells, formation of insulating products by the particulate oxidation products of those gases, and corrosion by salt aerosols injected into the plumes during the combustion itself. The most severe effects were due to conductive soot rather than to sulfur- or chlorine-containing species. It was found that the effects could be prevented by installation of high efficiency filtration equipment for air entering electronic equipment buildings.