Investigation of the Effects of Solution Temperature on the Corrosion Behavior of Austenitic Low-Nickel Stainless Steels in Citric Acid using Impedance and Polarization Measurements

Stainless steels may be classified according to alloy microstructure - ferritic, austenitic, martensitic, duplex, and precipitation hardening grades. Among these, austenitic grade has the largest contribution to market due to the alloy's numerous industrial and domestic applications. In this study, the corrosion behavior of low-Nickel stainless steel in citric acid was investigated using potentiodynamic polarization techniques and Electrochemical Impedance Spectroscopy (EIS). The corrosion current density which is directly related to corrosion rate was extracted from the generated anodic polarization curve. Increasing the temperature of the citric acid resulted to increased corrosion current densities indicating higher corrosion rates at initial corrosion condition. EIS was performed to generate Nyquist plots whose shape and size depicts the corrosion mechanism and corrosion resistance of the alloy in citric acid, respectively. All the generated Nyquist plots have depressed semi-circle shapes implying that corrosion process takes place with charge-transfer as the rate-determining step. Based from the extracted values of polarization resistance (Rp), the temperature of the solution has negative correlation with the corrosion resistance of the studied alloy.