Here's a little info on coolant you can pick your brains with. Thought some of you here might find this interesting as i know coolant is a heavily discussed topic over here...

Why we have additives: they protect against liner pitting, scale, foaming, rust, cavitation and erosion, and changes in PH

Liner pitting/cavitation corrosion is caused by imploding vapor bubbles; can eat thru cylinder wall. The pressure from these vapor bubbles collapsing is 15k-20k psi from shock wave impact. Additives form a layer of protection on the cylinder wall to prevent this.

inorganic additives:

•Nitrite: Ferrous metal protection and liner pitting protection

•Nitrate: Aluminum protection

•Silicate: Aluminum protection

•Molybdate: Protects all system metals plus works very well with nitrite to protect liners

•Phosphate: Buffer plus ferrous metal & aluminum protection

•Borate: Buffer and ferrous metal protection

Organic additives:

Benzoic acid: iron and aluminum protection
t-butyl benzoic: iron and aluminum protection
adipic acid: aluminum protection protection
DDA: iron and aluminum protection protection
2EH: iron and aluminum protection protection

All of these may or may not be relevant to 6L coolant, but I included them anyway. If anybody has any other questions relevant to oil & cooling systems (oil pumps, coolant pumps, oil coolers, thermostats, etc) on diesel trucks, ask away and I'll try and get an answer. I probably won't be able to answer any powerstroke-specific or 6L specific info though unless it's information I can find on the interwebs as I don't work for International or Ford. Cheers