Corrosion behavior of synthetic polymer inhibitors in acidic environment: A review

Polymer compounds are found to offer excellent corrosion resistance to metals when exposed to acidic environment during acid pickling, acid descaling and industrial cleaning. Though, numerous problems emerged with the use of inorganic inhibitors due to their environmental threat to the environment. Owing to these problems, the use of organic green inhibitors (leaf extracts) came into limelight. However, many of these inhibitors decompose easily when subjected to elevated temperature which in turn reduces the efficiency of the inhibitors. In order to overcome some these aforementioned problems, synthetic polymers were found as an alternative. Vast research has been investigated and reported on the use of synthetic polymer compounds as corrosion inhibitors. The performance of these polymers is largely dependent on the moieties, molecular weight and composition associated with the molecular structure of the compound. -NH2-, -COOH-, -OH- and many more moieties block the active metal sites by the large film formed on the metal surface. This paper gives an overview of the behavior of synthetic polymers as corrosion inhibitors in acidic environment.