Effect of Cooking Condiments on the Mass Loss of Artisanal Aluminum Cooking Utensils: The Case of Congo—Brazzaville

Corrosion of cookware is a growing concern for the durability of materials. A rapidly emerging theme that is one of the major current societal challenges at the interface of environmental and health issues. In this present work, the corrosion of aluminum in food environments (salt water and fresh tomatoes) was studied. The three aluminum utensils were purchased in the various workshops in Brazzaville (Republic of the Congo). The weight loss method followed the effect of cooking media on cookware, X-ray diffraction (XRD) and fluorescence (XRF) are two methods used to characterize alloys. XRF analysis indicates that the samples consist of aluminum as a basic element. XRD reveals that the essential building blocks of cookware samples are aluminum, silicon, iron, copper, magnesium and zinc. Finally, gravimetric measurements are carried out to assess the mass losses of samples of artisanal kitchen utensils when cooking food. Aluminum is found to be sensitive in TF and OS media.