Novel Synthesis and Characterization of Vegetable Oil Derived Corrosion Inhibitors

Abstract

This paper presents a novel one-pot synthesis of fatty acid amides, derived from natural vegetable oils.A series of vegetable oils, which includes: linseed oil, sunflower oil, peanut oil, cress oil, almond oil and canola oil, were esterified via transesterification reaction.This first step reaction was then followed by addition of ammonia (NH 3 ) under reflux conditions to produce the corresponding fatty acid amide.The progress of the reaction was followed qualitatively using Thin Layer Chromatography (TLC) technique with ethyl acetate as eluent.Fourier Transform Infrared Spectroscopy (FTIR) was used to investigate the different samples of the reaction mixture in order to determine the functional group transformation.In this method, no cleanup between steps was attempted.The idea is to try to produce effective corrosion inhibitors at very low cost.Corrosion studies were performed on the product from the reaction, without cleanup or isolation, again to reduce commercial cost.Corrosion studies of carbon steel were performed in vigorously stirred aerated seawater, one of the most corrosive natural environments.Corrosion rate measurements were recorded to identify the corrosion rate by mass loss over a specific time period (one week).LPr was recorded by Gamry potentiostat and mass loss recorded using a 0.1 mg analytical balance.Our results showed correlation between the TLC and FTIR techniques indicating a successful progress of the reaction and functional group transformation.In addition, the corrosion inhibition efficiencies obtained using the corrosion measurement methods were up to 98% for some of the oil samples, equivalent to a corrosion rate reduction of 44.The one pot synthetic route chosen is a low cost approach to the formation of fatty acid amides.