Corrosion and bacterial growth mitigation in the desalination plant by imidazolium based ionic liquid: Experimental, surface and molecular docking analysis

The desalination plants wieldy used CuNi alloys. However, it faces a fundamental corrosion problem in a 3.5% NaCl solution containing sulfide ions. In this research, we have examined ionic liquid's corrosion and bacterial inhibition activity, i.e., 1-Dodecyl-3-methylimidazolium iodide (IMD-IL). The obtained data from weight loss and electrochemical reveals the corrosion inhibitive performance of IMD-IL is 96.8% at 100 mg/L. The EIS suggests increasing the charge transfer resistance and film resistance with increasing IMD-IL amount, supporting the inhibitive action of IMD-IL molecules. The biological activity results reveal the deactivation of SRB action after the addition of IMD-IL molecules. The SEM and EDX studies support the IMD-IL adsorption onto the CuNi surface. The molecular docking results confirmed that IMD-IL could bind the cytochrome c, inhibiting its activity and thereby interrupting the electron transport pathway between bacteria and the CuNi.