Water-soluble green corrosion inhibitors of mild steel
An experimental and computational study examines penicillamine drug and cysteine as green corrosion inhibitors of mild steel.
Cysteine amino acid is well known as an effective green corrosion inhibitor. Due to the structural similarity between d-penicillamine (PA) drug and cysteine, it scientists expected PA also acts as a green corrosion inhibitor.
They describe the corrosion inhibition ability of PA and l-cysteine (Cys) on the mild steel in 1 M HCl using potentiodynamic polarisation, electrochemical impedance spectroscopy (EIS), and scanning electron microscopy (SEM). Experiments were performed in various concentrations of Cys and PA and different immersion times.
Effective corrosion inhibitors
The results suggested that both Cys and PA can be used as effective corrosion inhibitors. PA and Cys are mixed-type inhibitors; however, PA affected significantly only the cathodic reaction. The adsorption of inhibitors followed the Langmuir adsorption isotherm. Electronic structure of Cys and PA was elucidated with density functional theory (DFT) calculations. Molecular adsorption on Fe(110) was investigated using molecular dynamics (MD) simulations.
The study has been published in Progress in Organic Coatings, Volume 142, May 2020.
