Inhibition study of additives towards the corrosion of ferrous metal in palm biodiesel

Highlights: • TBA doped biodiesel exhibits fairly good corrosion inhibition efficiency. • TBA forms nitrogen-containing layer on metal surface and protects the corrosion. • Materials exposed to TBA doped biodiesel show less surface roughness. - Abstract: Some efforts have already been given by other researchers to characterize the corrosion behavior of different metals in biodiesel. However, there is very limited information on its remedial measure. Therefore, this study investigates the effects of tert-butylamine (TBA), benzotriazole (BTA), butylate-dhydroxytoluene (BHT), and pyrogallol (PY) on the corrosion of cast iron (CI) and low carbon steel (LCS) through an immersion test in palm biodiesel (B100) at 300 K. Result shows that TBA-doped biodiesel exhibits fairly good corrosion-inhibiting properties for materials exposed to B100. Inhibition efficiency of TBA is found to be 86.54% and 86.71% for CI and LCS, respectively which is far better than other tested additives in this study. The high inhibition efficiency could be attributed to the dominant physical adsorption of N-containing compound which creates a protective layer over the metal surface and prevents corrosion.