Reference electrodes are generally implemented for the purpose of monitoring the cathodic protection potentials of buried or immersed metallic structures.
In the market, many types of reference electrodes are available for this purpose, such as saturated calomel, silver/silver chloride, and copper/copper sulfate.
These electrodes contain a porous ceramic junction plate situated in the cylindrical body bottom to permit ionic flux between the internal electrolyte (of the reference electrode) and the external electrolyte.
In this work, the copper/copper sulfate reference electrode was modified by replacing the porous ceramic junction plate with a metallic platinum wire. The main purpose of this modification was to avoid the ion copper transport from coming from the inner reference electrode solution into the surrounding electrolyte and to mitigate the copper plating on the coupon surfaces. Lab tests were performed in order to compare the performance of the two mentioned reference electrodes. We verified that the experimental errors associated with the measurements conducted with the developed reference electrode would be negligible, as the platinum surface area exposed to the surrounding electrolyte and/or to the reference electrolyte are maintained as small as possible.
