Characterization of plants and seaweeds based corrosion inhibitors against microbially influenced corrosion in a cooling tower water environment

This study compares the inhibitory activities of methanolic extraction of various plants including Artemisia pallens (MEAP), mangrove leaves like Rhizophora mangle (MERM), Avicennia marina (MEAM) and seaweeds such as Pandia povanica (MEPP), Sargassum tenerrimum (MEST) on the corrosion of mild steel (MS) coupons that were incubated on Pseudomonas stutzeri (P. stutzeri) SKR4 strain isolated from the cooling tower water (CTW). The activities of inhibitors are found using GCMS analysis and interactions between microbes and inhibitors were examined in the test for antibacterial activity, minimal inhibition concentration, biofilm formation assay. These all show an excellent inhibitory effect against P. stutzeri. The weight loss, impedance spectroscopy, and Tafel polarization tests used to validate the corrosion investigations show that the inhibitors MEAP-75, MERM-71, MEAM-69, MEPP-66 and MEST-63 % are effective at inhibiting corrosion at 25 ppm. According to Potentiodynamic polarization plots, these five inhibitors act as mixed-type inhibitors. The surface investigation of MS metals by FTIR, SEM, XRD to examine the biofilm surface and it revealed deep pitting corrosion in the bacterial system. In the conclusion, ecofriendly green inhibitors have controlled the biocorrosion in cooling tower water and are recommended for usage in industries as an alternative to environmentally hazardous inhibitors.(c) 2022 The Authors. Published by Elsevier B.V. on behalf of King Saud University. This is an open access article under the CC BY-NC-ND license (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/).