Chapter19 - Ionic liquids as green and sustainable corrosion inhibitors I

Abstract

The corrosion of metal materials is an ongoing problem in the chemical industry. The use of sustainable and green technologies in corrosion protection is a very important task, because, the rise in environmental and ecological awareness. Currently, ionic liquids (ILs) based corrosion inhibitors are widely performed to protect the metal materials from the aggressive corrosion environment in the chemical industry. This is due to the ionic liquids are environmental-friendly, more sustainable, and have excellent corrosion-resistance organic molecules at low concentrations. In addition, the ILs are good soluble, non-toxic behaviour, non-inflammability, low volatility, good adsorbent, high thermal, and chemical stable in the aggressive medium. Besides, ILs have large planer anionic and cationic groups, which support an intermolecular synergism behavior; as a result, the adsorption of ILs is increased. These properties make ILs be a more efficient inhibitor. The ILs effectively protect the metal materials included steel, copper, magnesium, zinc and aluminum in the acid cleaning, descaling, pickling, gas or oil processes and desalination applications. In this chapter, the types, inhibition mechanism, inhibition properties of ILs, theoretical and experimental insights in the ILs inhibition mechanism were reviewed.