A highly effective, economical and environmentally friendly composite corrosion inhibitor strategy for dynamic supercritical CO2 aqueous environments

Abstract

Supercritical carbon dioxide (sCO${}_2$) corrosion remains a significant and ongoing impediment within the domain of carbon capture, utilization, and storage (CCUS) technologies, necessitating the advancement of robust mitigation tactics. Based on experimental and theoretical investigations, we have studied the inhibition performance of a composite formulation on X80 steel. The in-situ electrochemical studies have confirmed the superior performance of this composite inhibitor, achieving an inhibition efficiency exceeding 99.79%. Through atomistic simulations, we gain mechanistic insights at the molecular level, revealing how the dissociated heteroaromatic species of the composite inhibitor effectively chelate to the metal surface through unsaturated oxygen–carbon pairings, thereby enhancing surface coverage. Such findings provide a prototypical structure–activity relationship to inform the application of optimized corrosion inhibitor formulations in the challenging setting of sCO₂ environments.