THE USE OF LIGNOSULFONATE FROM EMPTY FRUIT BUNCHES AS CORROSION INHIBITOR

Corrosion is a natural process that can affect the performance of facilities in oil and gas industry. This gives a serious view of pollution to the ocean especially during production, transportation, storage process, transmission pipelines and other activities on offshore platforms. This paper discusses the effectiveness of lignin extracted from Jatropha Curcas empty fruit bunch (EFB) as a corrosion inhibitor agent. Jatropha Curcas empty fruit bunch was used in this study as it is a good source of lignin where it contains 25% of lignin. Lignin had been extracted from the Jatropha Curcas empty fruit bunches using Klason Lignin method and the purity of treated lignin was verified using the Fourier Transform Infrared Spectroscopy (FT-IR). Extracted lignin then went under sulphite processes to change its characteristic into lignosulfonate. A performance comparison work was carried out in the laboratory with and without commercial inhibitor and lignosulfonate EFB using carbon steel in brine solution to determine its optimum concentration. The commercial inhibitor used was Sodium Benzotriazole (BTA-S). Experimental results revealed that lignosulfonate EFB could give a better performance as corrosion inhibitor compared to BTA-S. The optimum concentration for lignosulfonate EFB was 20% with inhibitor efficiency was 70%. These findings show that EFB lignosulfonate has the potential to be a good corrosion inhibitor.