Cleaner anti-corrosive steel substrate coating developed
Researchers from the Egyptian Atomic Energy Authority have created a corrosion inhibitor for protecting steel substrates. The coating is environmentally friendly and is made with unsaturated amino acid compounds.
The researchers from Egyptian Atomic Energy Authority synthesised the new corrosion inhibitors through two steps.

Reacting EPO with AB and AA

At first, renewable resource based palm oil was epoxidised under a well-established condition to form epoxidised triglyceride ester of palm oil (EPO). FTIR and oxirane content analysis were used to confirm the formation of the epoxidation reaction. In step two, EPO was reacted chemically with 4-aminobenzoic acid (AB) and 2-aminoacrylic acid (AA) under controlled conditions of an inert atmosphere and high temperature to produce EPO/AB and EPO/AA adducts. The adducts were characterised by FTIR-spectroscopy and oxirane content analysis. They are evaluated as corrosion inhibitors via adding different concentrations of them to the epoxidised soybean oil acrylate (ESOA) coating formulations.

AB inhibitor displays higher resistance

Then all coating films were subjected to UV irradiation. Degrees of rusting, blistering, failure at scribe, and weight loss values were measured for all UV cured films, in addition to the chemical and mechanical measurements. The obtained experimental results revealed that the cured coating films containing EPO/AB inhibitor displayed higher resistance to corrosion on the mild steel substrate than EPO/AA without any effect on the mechanical and chemical properties of cured films. Also, the optimum concentration of the prepared inhibitors was to be 0.5%.

The study is published in: Progress in Organic Coatings, Volume 107, June 2017, Pages 18–28