Evaluation of the Inhibitive Properties of Silver Nanoparticles in Senna occidentalis Root Extract as Corrosion Inhibitor of Mild Steel

Abstract

The use of nanoparticles as corrosion inhibitors has gained popularity because of its increased corrosion efficiency due to increase surface to volume ratio. Nanoparticles which undergo physisorption/chemisorption to the corrosion metal surface and inhibit the corrosion efficiently also have low toxicity, low cost and easy production. In this research work, weight lost method was applied to study the inhibitive properties of silver nanoparticles (AgNPs) synthesized using Senna occidentalis root extract as environmentally benign corrosion inhibitor of mild steel in 0.5 M H₂SO₄ medium at 298 K and 308 K. It was observed that the corrosion rate of the steel sample decreases with increase in concentration of the silver nanoparticles but increased with rise in temperature.  The highest inhibition efficiency of 65.59% was obtained at 308 K at the concentration of 5 gdm^-3 and the least of 10.58% at the concentration of 1 gdm^-3 at 308 K. The decrease in inhibition efficiency with rise in temperature is suggestive of physical adsorption mechanism. The surface coverage was observed to increase with increasing concentration of the nanoparticles and decreased with increase in temperature. This could be as a result of physical adsorption mechanism. The evaluated activation energy was found to be higher for the inhibited process than for the uninhibited process. The increase in apparent activation energy in the presence of the nanoparticles denotes physical adsorption mechanism, while the reverse is usually attributed to chemical adsorption. The negative values of heat of adsorption Q_ads suggest that the adsorption phenomenon is exothermic.