Effective inhibition of mild steel corrosion in hydrochloric acid using EBIMOT, a 1, 3, 4-oxadiazole derivative bearing a 2-ethylbenzimidazole moiety: Electro analytical, computational and kinetic studies

Abstract

A new organic compound, 5-((2-ethyl-1Hbenzo[d]imidazol-1-yl)methyl)-1,3,4-oxadiazole-2-thiol (EBIMOT) has been investigated for its efficacy in the corrosion inhibition of mild steel in 0.5 M HCl at three different temperatures by classical weight loss technique, electrochemical impedance spectroscopy (EIS) and potentiodynamic polarization (PDP) methods. EBIMOT shows high inhibition activity through adsorption and this phenomenon was found to obey Langmuir adsorption isotherm. The kinetic parameters were also derived using the experimental data. The quantum chemical DFT studies were used to correlate the interrelation of inhibition efficiency and molecular structure.