Novel and efficient curcumin based fluorescent polymer for scale and corrosion inhibition

At present, in addition to the research and development of new energy sources, scale and corrosion inhibitors, as a class of water treatment agents, have the characteristics of water saving, energy saving and material saving, and have a wide range of applications. The polymers as scale and corrosion inhibitor are being required green, eco-friendly and on-line detection due to environmental concerns and economic benefits. Here, we presented an environment-friendly curcumin-citric acid-aspartic acid polymer (PCCA) scale and corrosion inhibitor using solvent-free and catalyst-free green synthesis method, where curcumin acted as fluorescent monomer in construction of inhibitor for the first time. The thermogravimetric analysis (TGA) and fluorescent spectra showed that PCCA had good thermostability and could be expected to detect on-line. We demonstrated by static method that PCCA exhibited high scale inhibition efficiency of 99.7% and 98.8% for CaSO4 and CaCO3 and had a good environment adaptability when inhibited CaSO4 growth. Moreover, the study found that the inhibition effects of PCCA against CaSO4 were lattice distortion, chelation and dispersion while only chelation and dispersion effects for against CaCO3. In addition, the polarization curves and electrochemical impedance spectroscopy (EIS) showed PCCA had good corrosion inhibition performance with efficiency of 84.1% due to the restricted intrusion of O-2 and Cl- to carbon steel surface. This work demonstrated the feasibility and the potential of PCCA for scale and corrosion inhibition, also provided a new fluorescent monomer and paved a way to develop fluorescent-tagged inhibitor.