Abstract
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•The studied Schiff bases are good inhibitors for mild steel acid corrosion.•The inhibition efficiency increases with increasing concentration of the inhibitors.•Adsorption of inhibitors was found to obey Langmuir isotherm.•The obtained computational results have been adapted with the experimental data.
Two novel imines were synthesized and their inhibitive properties on mild steel corrosion in HCl were investigated using potentiodynamic polarization, electrochemical impedance spectroscopy and linear polarization resistance corrosion rate. Polarization curves indicate that all studied compounds were acting as mixed type inhibitors. All measurements showed that, inhibition efficiencies increase with increasing inhibitor concentration. Adsorption of these inhibitors follows Langmuir adsorption isotherm. The potential of zero charge in inhibited solution was studied, and a mechanism for the adsorption process was proposed. Theoretical calculations have been used to provide the correlation between the inhibition efficiencies of studied inhibitors and their molecular structure.