Feasibility Study of Jatropha Curcas Oil as an Organic Corrosion Inhibitor

Corrosion is a major problem in industries because millions of dollars are lost each year due to corrosion. Corrosion is defined as the natural degradation through electrochemical or chemical reaction. Corrosion can be fast or slow. The objective of this research is to identify the availability of Jatropha Oil as corrosion inhibitors. The factors such as exposure time, temperature, concentration and pH value that can affect the performance of the Jatropha inhibitor will be tested in the experiments. Besides the affect of Jatropha inhibitor’s concentration will be examined in this study.
The jatropha oil will be extracted chemically from the seeds by using hexane as the solvent by using soxhlet extractor. Since the fat or oil are not soluble in water, the Jatropha oil need to be safonified through saponification process. There are two methods of corrosion testing that apply in this experiments, which are weight-loss corrosion test and electrochemical corrosion cell. In the test, coupons in fluids with and without inhibitor are exposed to environmental condition in order to observe the corrosivity. This organic inhibitor will function by forming a film on metal surfaces that stops the flow of corrosion current. Corrosion inhibitors based on organic source is the most environmentally acceptable.
Jatropha oil can act as corrosion inhibitor because Jatropha oil contained a high percentage of monounsaturated oleic and polyunsaturated linoleic acid indicating it has a semi-drying property. The corrosion test and measurement was carried out by weight loss and electrochemical methods. In the test, some of common environmental variables such as effect of temperature and pH value to corrosion rate have been considered. The concentrations of Jatropha oil also is taken into consideration in determining the corrosion rate.