Abstract
Stainless steel is an important material used in many applications due to its mechanical strength and corrosion-resistant properties. The high corrosion resistance of stainless steel is provided by the passive film. Different stainless steels have different alloy elements and surface properties which could have a significant influence on bacterial attachment to the surface and thus might result in different microbial corrosion behaviours. In this study, the effect of adhesion of sulfate-reducing bacteria (SRB) on corrosion behaviour in artificial seawater on different stainless steels was investigated. Stainless steel materials used were SS 410, SS 420, SS 316 and DSS 2205 and pure chromium. The contact angle was measured to study the effect of surface properties of materials. Adhesion was measured by counting cells attached to the surface of materials. The corrosion behaviour of the materials was measured by electrochemical testing including measuring open circuit potential, electrochemical impedance spectroscopy and potentiodynamic behaviour. The long-term corrosion behaviour of each material was studied after six months of exposure by measuring weight loss and surface analysis with scanning electron microscope with energy-dispersive X-ray analysis. Hydrophobicity had a strong effect on bacterial attachment. Alloying elements e.g. nickel also had shown its ability to attract bacteria to adhere on the surface. However, the corrosion rate of different materials is determined not only by bacterial attachment but also by the stability of the passive film which is determined by the alloying elements, such as Mo and Cr. Chromium showed high resistance to corrosion, possibly due to toxicity on bacterial attachment. The nature of bacterial attachment and corrosion behaviour of the materials are discussed
| Original language | English |
|---|---|
| Article number | 201577 |
| Pages (from-to) | 1-22 |
| Number of pages | 22 |
| Journal | Royal Society Open Science |
| Volume | 8 |
| Issue number | 1 |
| DOIs | |
| Publication status | Published - 13 Jan 2021 |
Bibliographical note
Funding Information:Data accessibility. Data available from the Dryad Digital Repository: https://doi.org/10.5061/dryad.18931zcvg [83]. Authors’ contributions. T.T. conceived, designed the work, analysed data and wrote the manuscript. K.K., A.P. and S.T. assisted in designing the work, analysing data and revised the manuscript. All authors read and approved the final manuscript to be published. Competing interests. We declare we have no competing interests. Funding. This research was supported by an Australian Research Training Program Scholarship (grant no. 302787) provided through Charles Darwin University. Acknowledgements. The authors acknowledge the support of Charles Darwin University technical staff in preparing experiment; The Centre for Microscopy and Microanalysis Centre in University of Queensland for doing SEM and EDX and Dr. Steven Mason, School of Chemistry and Molecular Biosciences, The University of Queensland for imaging with ZEISS LSM 510 META confocal laser scanning microscope.
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© 2021 The Authors.
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Copyright 2021 Elsevier B.V., All rights reserved.