An investigation on the optimal concentration of oil palm (elaeis guineensis) leaves extract as corrosion inhibitor of carbon steel in deaerated saline solution

Corrosion simply refers to destructive and unintentional attack on metals. It is extractive metallurgy in reverse. That is, it serves to return metals back to their ores.1 Corrosion has been recognized as a phenomenon that has existed for as long as mankind. It has devastated several plants in the industrial age, bringing into focus the need to study and understand it. Since then, mankind has come to accept that corrosion is an inevitable part of the industrial process. The use of inhibitors to protect metals against corrosion is based on the ability of certain individual chemical compounds or mixtures of these, to reduce the rate of corrosion process or to completely suppress this process when they are introduced in small concentrations into a corrosive medium. Steel is used to make a wide range of equipment and metallic structures due to its low cost and good mechanical strength. Much of the steel that is manufactured is exposed to outdoor conditions, often in highly polluted atmosphere where corrosion is considerably more severe than in clean rural environments.2