Bitcoin Forum

I truly have no idea which section is better but this one seems the only one.

I'm looking for someone with knowledge of chemistry I believe. I posted long ago in another forum but couldn't find someone.

Among the most important characteristics to consider are fire and rust resistance, yes.  My question is, do you think it's resistant in an environment with nitrogen (N), and/or potassium oxide (K2O)?
I'm planning on buying most of them available anyway to test and not rely 100% on comments found on the web but I was just wondering if anyone had any knowledge of chemistry.

I did a few tests already with acid citric, Na2CO3·10H2O, Na2H3CO6 but that was for something else, and my question is indirectly related to a place to store 'real' backups

Someone with a cryptosteel might be better placed to answer this but there are a lot of studies on stainless steel with nitrogen reactions in particular.

I went on cryptosteel's website and found the steel that's used is: AISI 304

I then had a quick search (and clicked the first result ;) ) and found https://link.springer.com/article/10.1016/S1006-706X(10)60090-8.

Which suggests the activation energy for that type of steel and nitrogen was extremely high (their words) at over 2000kj/mol - this would mean it's very unlikely that the nitrogen would react with it to a noticeable extent.

Nitrogen is not reactive, most of our air is Nitrogen. Pure Nitrogen is even used to achieve inert environment in certain processes. Potassium oxide, while highly reactive, wouldn't cause corrosion of steel, because it's a basic oxide, and bases generally don't react with metals.

Jameson Lopp did a large test of steel plates for Bitcoin seeds (https://jlopp.github.io/metal-bitcoin-storage-reviews/), including heat and corrosion tests.

Most acids you can find in your household are pretty mild and most of them are't going to corrode stainless steel. Although corrosion depends on multiple factors mainly the family the steel belongs to indicates its resistance to different acids and environments. Although other factors could change the result.
For example 316 series are more resistant to environments (eg. underwater) with higher concentrations of Chlorine while 304 series are less resistant.

The other thing I would worry about in a acidic environment is pitting which wouldn't show up if you test the intact plate. Basically your steel backup will have letters "chiseled" on it which is a localized defect and in an acidic environment it could cause pitting which would increase the speed of corrosion.

I'm not good at chemistry but these two have no effect on corrosion. I've seen potassium hydroxide be used as an etchant though (which is a solution we use in crystallography to selectively corrode part of the structure so that it can be viewed and analyzed).

That's about the existing nitrogen atoms in stainless steel that may be desorbed (removed) from the alloy while it is in a molten state in above 1550 °C which could affect the properties of SS such as its hardness.
It is not about corrosion :)