An efficient synthesis of electrospun TiO2-nanofibers/Schiff base phenylalanine composite and its inhibition behavior for C-steel corrosion in acidic chloride environments

https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jtice.2020.06.002Get rights and content

Highlights

  • Synthesis and characterization of TiO2-nanofibers/Schiff base phenylalanine composite for corrosion protection of C-steel.

  • The protection capacity and stability of SBP have been significantly improved through the combination with TiO2 NFs.

  • The protection capacity of the individual SBP and TiO2 NFs/SBP composite are 85.6% and 97.9%, respectively.

  • The TiO2 NFs/SBP material acts as a good mixed-type inhibitor.

  • FESEM/EDX and FT-IR investigations show the TiO2 NFs/SBP composite protected the C-steel surface.

Abstract

Non-precious TiO2 nanofibers (NFs) Schiff base phenylalanine (SBP) composite was designed via facile methodology; electrospinning and Schiff base loading. The as-fabricated TiO2 NFs/SBP material was investigated in terms of Field emission-scanning electron microscope (FE-SEM), X-ray photoelectron spectroscopy (XPS), Transmission electron microscope (TEM), Fourier-transform infrared spectroscopy (FT-IR), Thermogravimetric analysis (TGA), Brunauer-Emmett-Teller (BET) surface area, Energy-dispersive X-ray spectroscopy (EDX), and X-ray diffraction (XRD) techniques. These physicochemical characterizations indicate the successful design of a nanocomposite of TiO2 NFs/SBP. The corrosion protection of C-steel in acidic chloride environments by the designed TiO2 NFs/SBP material was examined using electrochemical tools (open circuit potential (OCP) vs. time, linear polarization resistance (LPR) corrosion rate, potentiodynamic polarization (PDP), electrochemical impedance spectroscopy (EIS)) and surface morphology investigations (FESEM/EDX and FT-IR). The findings showed that the protection capacity (EPDP%) of the individual SBP and TiO2 NFs are 85.6 and 64.8%, respectively, while the EPDP% value for TiO2 NFs/SBP composite is 97.9% at the same conditions. The as-prepared TiO2 NFs/SBP material acts as a good mixed-type inhibitor and its adsorption at the steel/HCl interface followed Langmuir's isotherm model. FESEM/EDX and FT-IR inspections established the formation of the adsorbed layer of the TiO2 NFs/SBP molecule on the electrode surface. The outcomes display that the TiO2 NFs/SBP composite could be used as an efficient inhibitor with excellent anti-corrosion features for C-steel in the acidic pickling solution.

Introduction

Corrosion of metals has been an inevitable issue in many fields, for instance, the oil recovery industry and chemical industry [1]. The metal corrosion will significantly affect the performance and structure of materials and equipment and bring great opposing effect on the economy and safety of industrial production [2, 3]. The carbon steel has now been used commonly because of its advantageous property. The low content of carbon in steel makes it harder but more vulnerable to corrosion. Accordingly, C- steel, generally, cannot be utilized without protective measures for corrosion. Acid mediums are usually applied for industrial scrubbing as in the petrochemical processes and in oil well acidification [4]. Hydrochloric acid is usually utilized in the pickling procedures of alloys and metals. The C-steel corrosion in such acidic solutions and its protection constitute a prime problem of processes [5]. Presently, numerous approaches are applied to decrease the loss produced by corrosion, like coatings, corrosion-resistant materials and corrosion inhibitors. Among these techniques, corrosion inhibitors are extensively concerned by researchers due to their widely applicable cost-effective and easy operation [6], [7], [8], [9], [10].

Synthetic organic compounds were introduced to minimize or remove the aggressive corrosion of metals and/or metal alloys [11]. Most of the common active synthetic inhibitors have electronegative atoms or donor atoms such as N, O, S, P .etc. in addition to polar bonds that can provide high electrochemical stability for the metals via formation of co-ordination or electrostatic bonds [12]. Generally, the presence of active functional groups including hydroxide, cyanide, imine or aldehyde in addition to aromaticity and electron density can play the major role for the interaction between metal and the inhibitor molecule. Thus, many synthetic compounds were reported as inhibitors in acidic environments such as quinoline [13], thiourea [14], imidazole [15], dihydropyrazole [16], thiadiazol [17], hydroxyquinoline [18], and Schiff base (SB) [19]. These chemical inhibitors can be adsorbed at the metallic interface and so, form a protective layer on the metallic surface. Schiff bases derived from amino acid have phenolic hydroxide, -C=N and carboxylic hydroxide which provides high potential for them to be applied as non-precious corrosion inhibitors [20]. The inhibition characteristics of Schiff base compounds could be improved by using nanoparticles [6].

Electrospun TiO2 has received significant attention in different applications such as renewable energy [21] and water treatment [22] because of the enhanced electron transfer and easy preparation. Electrospinning is one of the most effective and productive method and can be chemically controlled [23]. The doping of TiO2 can be carried out via mixing the doping source with the polymer sol-gel before the electrospinning. In this report, the TiO2 NFs were modified after electrospinning and calcination steps because of the required application; corrosion inhibition. The corrosion inhibition can be affected by the presence of SB and so, Schiff base phenylalanine (SBP) was introduced as a composite with TiO2 NFs. The suggested TiO2 NFs/SBP composite material was prepared via an electrospinning technique followed by SBP-loading. The composite material has two major parts; the nano-oxide part and the organic SBP part. FESEM and TEM analyses were introduced to know the morphology of the introduced composite in addition to XPS and FT-IR were investigated to indicate the chemistry of TiO2-NFs/SBP composite. The inhibition behavior of the TiO2-NFs/SBP composite against corrosion of C-steel samples was evaluated by LPR corrosion rate, PDP, and EIS techniques in acidic chloride environments. The formation performance of adsorbed inhibitor film was examined by SEM, EDX and FTIR studies. The designed TiO2 NFs/SBP composite material has an acceptable efficiency for the inhibition of C-steel against its corrosion in acidic chloride environments. To the best of our knowledge, we think that this is the first report using TiO2 NFs/SBP composite as a corrosion inhibitor rather than the commonly utilized inorganics.

Section snippets

Materials and solutions

Tetraisopropyl orthotitanate (Ti-(OiPr)4; 97%), Poly(vinyl acetate) (PVAc), glacial acetic acid, Dimethylformamide (DMF; ≥99.8% ), 2-Hydroxybenzaldehyde ≥ 99.0%) and l-Phenylalanine, ( ≥ 98%) were purchased from Sigma-Aldrich (USA). All these chemicals were utilized as found without any purification.

Carbon steel (CS) specimens with following chemical composition: C: 0.20%; Ni: 0.03%; Mn: 0.71%; S: 0.06%; Cr: 0.03% and remainder Fe were employed in this study. Prior test, the specimens were

Material characterization

In this work, TiO2 was synthesized and combined with Schiff base phenylalanine (SBP) to design novel and non-precious corrosion inhibitor material having both high inhibition performance and low-cost character to be applied as C-steel protection material in acidic chloride environments. The introduced TiO2 SB composite material was investigated through physicochemical methods; SEM, EDX, elemental mapping, TEM, FT-IR, BET-analysis and TGA analyses to study the morphology of the composite in

Conclusions

A novel TiO2/Schiff base phenylalanine (SBP) composite material was successfully designed via two facile steps; electrospinning and SBP loading. The composite was deeply characterized to describe the morphology, chemical bonds, surface area, crystallinity, and chemistry of the TiO2/SBP material. The composite structure consists of fibers and platelet-like structure with variable dimensions which can be due to the electrospun TiO2 and organic SBP, respectively. The combined electrochemical and

Declaration of Competing Interest

The authors declare that they have no known competing financial interests or personal relationships that could have appeared to influence the work reported in this paper.

Acknowledgement

The authors acknowledge the Deanship of Scientific Research at King Faisal University, Saudi Arabia for the financial support under the research group support track (Grant No.1811020). Also, we would like to thank the funding support from the Key-Area Research and Development Program of Guangdong Province, China (2019B111107002), the National Key Research and Development Program of China, China (2018YFE0124900), the National Natural Science Foundation of China, China

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