The Importance Of Corrosion

Corrosion is the deterioration of materials by chemical interaction with their environment. It cuts short the lifetime of steel products such as bridges and automobiles. The cost of corrosion is huge and reducing corrosion is one of the most important problem in engineering. Corrosion is all around us and can affect our lives in many ways, because metals are widely used in our world. Corrosion-related failures in the industries often result in catastrophic failures.

Failures caused by corrosion could and do lead to a direct failure of a component which could affect the entire system and can not only be very expensive in terms of down-time to repair or replace equipment, but can also be costly in loss of productivity, human life and health

Inhibitors are substances that directly or indirectly coat a film on a metal surface to protect it from its environment. Metals are suppressed by the action of adsorptive inhibitors which may prevent the adsorption of the aggressive ions, and by the formation of a more resistant film on the metallic surface (El Maghraby, 2009).

Corrosion inhibition is of great practical importance, being extensively employed in curtailing wastage of engineering materials and minimizing corrosion control costs, in oil extraction and processing industries, heavy industrial manufacturing, water treatment facility, water-containing hydraulic fluids, engine coolants, ferrous metal cleaners, automatic transmission fluids, automotive component manufacture, cutting fluids etc. to minimize localized corrosions and failures (Loto, et al.

1.3 Specific Objectives of the Study

The objectives of the research are:

i. Evaluating the effects of Aloe Vera gel extract on the corrosion of mild steel in 0.5 M HCl and 0.5 M NaOH through Weight loss measurement. ii. Determining metal-inhibitor interaction mechanism using adsorption isotherm; Langmuir isotherms. iii. Determining the inhibition mode of the inhibitors using the kinetic parameters. iv. To carry out ANN modelling of the corrosion data emanating from the Weight loss experiments.

v. To carry out ANOVA (MLR) modelling of the corrosion data emanating from the Weight loss experiments.

1.4 Statement of problem

Most of the corrosion inhibitors used in processing industry are synthetic in nature, hence not environmentally friendly. Human health hazard like lung cancer are known to have arisen as a result of long time exposure to inorganic inhibitors such as chromates, phosphates.

Many research efforts have shown that gaps exist in the modelling of experimental corrosion data. Among such gaps is the fact that there appears to be no Artificial modelling of experimental data, thereby encouraging constant recourse to