An attempt has been made to provide directions to select the various corrosion inhibitors for different areas of petroleum industry based on their available structure-activity relationship. The present review highlights the utility of most of the inhibitors (used in production, handling, and distillation of crude oils) which are either N-containing compounds or their derivatives. The action of specific corrosion inhibitors used in oil well acidizing, refining units handling naphthenic acid crudes, and amine gas absorbers has been explained. Emphasis has been laid on the dependence of the inhibitor performance on the type of the test method used for its evaluation.
Keywords ; corrosion inhibitors, structure-activity, mechanism, evaluation. application, petroleum industry, sour gas. refining, handling