Enhancement of polyethylene glycol with chromium oxide nanoparticles to inhibit corrosion of steel in HCl

Abstract

In this work, chromium oxide nanoparticles were created using the co-precipitation approach, binary composite of chromium oxide and polyethylene glycol (PEG) in THF was created using the solution-processing method. X-ray diffraction (XRD), transmission electron microscopy (TEM), and field emission scanning electron microscopy (FESEM) were utilized to examine the morphology and determine the average size, revealing the hexagonal crystal structure of Cr₃O₄ nanoparticles. The weight loss method and a standard microscope were used to evaluate these compounds' corrosion inhibitions on steel in 5 M hydrochloric acid. The investigation into weight loss has shown that these chemicals' inhibitory efficacy changes with solution temperature and immersion time and rises with increasing weight. The different thermodynamic parameters were also computed in order to look into the corrosion inhibition process. The Freundlich adsorption isotherm governs how nanoparticles adsorb on steel surfaces in acid. The rate of the nanomaterial inhibitors was higher than 83.04%. The creation of a protected adsorption surface was thought to be the cause of the steel's potent inhibitory action. According to the computed values of the thermodynamic functions (ΔG, ΔH, and ΔS), the corrosion of the steel was endothermic, spontaneous, and non-random in the synthesized samples.