Bronze Protection in Seawater

The aim of this work was to investigate corrosion and protection of bronze in artificial seawater. The presence of high concentration of chlorides results in an extremely high level of corrosion in seawater. Possibility of bronze protection was examined by the use of three different corrosion inhibitors. One of them is benzotriazole which is very good corrosion inhibitor but it is toxic. In this study benzotriazole was used in order to compare with the efficiency of two new non-toxic corrosion inhibitors: 1-phenyl-4-methyl-imidazole and vapor phase corrosion inhibitor which is developed from the fermentation process of sugar beets. Investigation was performed by the means of electrochemical methods. Tested corrosion inhibitors show high inhibiting efficiency, which in some cases reaches 99%. These results confirmed that in highly aggressive media like seawater benzotriazole can be replaced with environmental friendly corrosion inhibitors which provide the same or even better corrosion protection of bronze.