Potential of Cashew Leaf Extract for Mild Steel Corrosion Mitigation in Hydrochloric Acid Environment

Abstract

This study investigated cashew leaf's potential to reduce mild steel (MS) corrosion in an HCl environment. With the use of a gas chromatography-mas spectrophotometer, the molecular components of the extract were determined. The adsorption mechanism and characteristics of the corrosion inhibition process were determined using the gravimetric approach. Furthermore, artificial neural networks (ANN) and response surface methodology (RSM) were used to forecast the cashew leaf extract's inhibitory efficacy. According to the results, the main biomolecular components of the cashew leaf extract were 9-tetradecenal, oleic acid, 2-hydroxy cyclopenta decanone, 4H-pyran-4-one, 3,5-dihydroxy-6-methyl-2,3-dihydro-4H-pyran-4-one, 2-methyl-3-ketotetrahydrofuran, oxirane, 8-methyl-9-tetradecenoic acid, 2,3-butylene oxide, 2,3-dimethyloxirane and 3(2H)-furanone. The biomolecules spontaneously adhered to the MS surface, a physical adsorption event. The results of the optimization/prediction analyses demonstrated that when it came to forecasting the extract's efficacy, ANN outperformed RSM. The study’s findings can serve as the basis for using cashew leaf as an additive to prevent mild steel from corroding in a corrosive environment.