Corrosion Inhibition of Mild Steel in an Acidic Media Using Ferrofluid as a Novel Approach to Superior Corrosion Resistance

Nanostructured materials have been establishing as the modern generation of high-performance materials in many areas, ranging from automotive engineering to bioengineering. Advancements in modern engineering and technology have hastened the development of high-performance, corrosion-resistant coatings that have a broad spectrum of effectiveness under a wider range of hostile environments. There is a lot of interest in the possibility of using ferrofluid as an acid inhibitor on Carbon Steel. 

Carbon steel finds wide application as a construction material for heat transport system in nuclear petrochemical and chemical process industries due to its low cost and easy availability and fabricability.  It is however highly prone to corrosion in acidic environment.  Here, we have introduce ferrofluid as a novel material comprising of magnetic nanoparticles as a corrosion inhibitor.  Corrosion behaviour of carbon steel in 1M HCl was studied as a function of concentration of aqueous ferrofluid.  The novel ferrofluid is specially synthesized to achieve the stability in acidic media.  The results are evaluated by gravimetric technique which shows that the inhibition efficiency increases with increasing ferrofluid concentration upto 300 ppm and there after it becomes constant.  A possible adsorption model of ferrofluid on to the metal surface is discussed in the full text.