A Brief Review on Peel Waste as Sustainable Corrosion Inhibitor

Abstract

Naturally occurring corrosion inhibitors can slow down the corrosion rate of metals without posing environmental hazards.Vegetable peels have proved beneficial in this regard. Their usage to effectively reduce corrosion rate is an eco- friendly approach which addresses the problem of waste disposal too. This brief review aims to present corrosion mitigation studies by few vegetable peels in different corrosive media and metals.

Introduction

Metal corrosion causes significant structural, aesthetic, and financial damage globally, with annual losses estimated between $700 billion and $1 trillion. Corrosion inhibitors are commonly used to mitigate these effects. Synthetic inhibitors, often containing heteroatoms like nitrogen, phosphorus, oxygen, and sulfur, are effective due to their adsorption properties but can be toxic (e.g., chromates). This has led to increased interest in natural, eco-friendly alternatives derived from plant extracts and waste materials, such as vegetable and fruit peels, which contain phytochemicals and polysaccharides that act as corrosion inhibitors.

Using fruit and vegetable waste as inhibitors supports sustainability and circular economy principles by reducing waste while protecting metals. Various studies have demonstrated high inhibition efficiencies (above 70% to over 95%) for peels from plants like pumpkin, pea, and Vicia faba, applied on metals like carbon steel, aluminium, and mild steel in corrosive environments such as NaCl solutions and acids.

Conclusion

The values of inhibition efficiencies of various vegetable peels indiverse corroding media as well as metals has been tabulated above. Fairly good results can be observed from the table. It can be concluded that vegetable peels can serve a dual purpose of hindering the corrosion process as well as that of waste disposal.

References

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Copyright

Copyright © 2025 Dr. Manpreet Kaur Bagga. This is an open access article distributed under the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.