Sterilized Chicken Feather as Eco-friendly Corrosion Inhibitor for Mild Steel in a Water- Based Drilling Mud – Gravimetric and FTIR Assessment

This research evaluated the corrosion performance of mild steel in sterilized and unsterilized alkaline mud corroding systems using chicken feather powder (CFP) obtained through the usual hydrolysis and acid neutralization protocol. Insightfully, gravimetric analysis revealed that bacterial infestation of the unsterilized environment caused its corrosion performance to be lower at 10.3% while the sterilized counterpart stood at 49% at 92 days of exposure to the environments respectively. The functional groups, C=N, O=C=O, H-C=O etc, revealed by FTIR to be present in the protein saturated feather were overwhelmed by microbial activities rendering them inactive to perform as inhibitors.