BIOMASS EXTRACTS INHIBIT CORROSION

Chris O. Akalezi

Electrochemistry and Materials Science Research Laboratory, Department of

Chemistry, Federal University of Technology, PMB 1526, Owerri, Nigeria
Tel: +2348080587128 E-mail: chrisakalezi@yahoo.com

ABSTRACT

The exploration of natural products of plant origin as inexpensive and eco-friendly sources of
important chemicals is an essential field of research; since more imaginative and targeted
exploitation of the abundant phytochemical resources (alkaloids, tannins, flavonoids, amino
acids, lignins, carbohydrates etc.) stored in biomass extracts could facilitate development of
inexpensive environmentally benign alternatives to hazardous chemical processes. We are thus
investigating several biomass extracts as potential sources of benign corrosion inhibiting
additives for iron and steel in aqueous aggressive media. Our experimental findings so far show
that most of the extracts effectively inhibit the corrosion via mixed cathodic/anodic inhibition
mechanism. The inhibiting action is attributed to adsorption of the phytochemical constituents on
the metal surface as revealed by impedance data as well as FTIR analysis of the corrosion
products and morphological imaging using scanning electron microscopy. We attempt to
overcome the restrictions associated with the complex composition of crude biomass extracts,
which encumbers precise experimental determination of the contributions of the different
constituents to the overall inhibiting effect mechanistically, by performing theoretical
computations in the framework of the density functional theory (DFT) to theoretically determine
the individual contributions of some extract constituents to the observed inhibiting effect. Our
approach involves analysis of the molecular electronic structures of key phytochemical
constituents of the crude extract, probing the mechanism of their interactions with the metal
surface, as well as computing the respective interaction energies. Our findings reveal distinct
adsorption configurations for some phytochemical constituents, which could account for the
remarkable corrosion inhibition performance of some biomass extracts.