Study on Mechanisms of Microbiologically Influenced Corrision of Metal from the Perspective of Bioelectrochemistry and Bio-energetics

Subjects: Materials Science >> Materials Science (General) submitted time 2023-03-31 Cooperative journals: 《材料研究学报》

夏进 徐大可 南黎 刘宏芳 李绮 杨柯

Abstract： People realized that microbes can cause serious microbiologically influenced corrosion (MIC) attack on metals since a century ago. In the past 20 years, the research relevant to MIC became more and more important due to severe damages and huge economic losses caused by microorganisms. Due to a lack of understanding, MIC has even been considered to be a“myth”in the field of corrosion, therefore, a theory which can cogently explain MIC phenomena is needed. The latest research result indicated that MIC is a bioelectrochemical process in essence. When the organic carbon is not available or fully consumed, metal such as iron would replace organic carbons as an electron donor for microorganisms, resulting in the occurrence of MIC. In addition, another theory related with the mechanism of MIC is that microbes could secrete corrosive metabolites such as organic acids. It is well known that corrosion is an exergonic process, and the microorganisms would utilize the energy released by the corrosion of metal to obtain their maintenance energy. Currently, electrochemical methods are widely used in MIC research, and the classical cathodic depolarization theory (CDT) was proposed based on electrochemistry. However, if only from the perspective of the electrochemistry, many phenomena of MIC can not be cogently explained. Researchers realized that the knowledge of bioenergetics and bioelectrochemistry may be the key to better understand the interactions between microorganisms and metals and then the process of MIC. This review is to summarize the recent works, and introduce the latest theories concerning the mechanism of MIC emphatically, such as biocatalytic cathodic sulfate reduction (BCSR) and electrical microbial influenced corrosion (EMIC). The introduction of the novel perspective to study MIC from bioenergetics and bioelectrochemistry is also provided in this review. Based on bioenergetics and bioelectrochemistry, the BCSR theory can cogently explain how and why MIC happens, which has been a longterm unsolved research problem.

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