SECTION A -OverviewA-3. Abstract: X-ray photoelectron spectroscopy (XPS) was carried out to analyse a commercially available butanenedioic acid (succinic acid) powder. XPS spectra were obtained using incident monochromatic Al Ka radiation at 1486.6 eV. A survey spectrum together with O 1s and C 1s core level spectra are presented. The presence of characteristic carbon and oxygen photoelectrons peaks allows the use these results as a reference for dicarboxylic acids.A-3a. Introduction: Butanedioic acid (succinic acid) is considered one of the most promising compounds for chemical production purposes as it is derived from renewable resources. It can be used to produce biopolymers such as polyesters, polyamides, and poly (ester amides). However, in order to make the industrial use of butanedioic acid economically favourable, it is still necessary to improve its purification through fermentation methods [1][2][3][4]. The potential of butanedioic acid for the production of bio-based polymers has been reported by the U.S. Department of Energy in 2004, which established butanedioic acid as one of the top 12 building block chemicals derived from renewable resources [4]. Its main applications are in the production of polymers, food, pharmaceuticals, fibres, biodegradable solvents, lubricating oils, cosmetics, agriculture, alkyd resins and coatings (known as succinates) [5]. In recent years there has been a substantial research effort in the corrosion field focussed on developing "green" corrosion inhibitors, which are protective and environmentally friendly [5][6][7][8][9][10]. Some studies have investigated the influence of organic compounds on the corrosion of metal substrates in acid. Most organic inhibitors form a protective coating by adsorption to the metal surface. The use of butanedioic acid for the passivation of different metal substrates has been little explored, indicating an opportunity for new developments in this area [6][7][8][9][10].In order to understand the interaction between dicarboxylic acids and metallic substrates, characterisation of the pure compounds is required. The present work presents X-ray photoelectron spectra of a butanedioic acid standard powder. It is the second part of a series of three papers presenting results for standard dicarboxylic acids with varying chain lengths: propanedioic, butanedioic and pentanedioic.Dicarboxylic acids and their respective salts are rather unstable and known to undergo damage when exposed to X-rays, hence there was always a compromise between quality of spectra and level of damage, as reported for calcium oxalate by Salvi et. al [11]. The use of a 50 eV pass energy required a lower acquisition time to achieve a reasonable signal-to-noise ratio. For the same reason, the channel width was chosen to be 0.2 eV rather than the typical value of 0.1 eV. The acquisition time was 101 s.In addition to the spectra recorded under standard acquisition conditions, 'snapshot' spectra (acquistion time 1 s) of the C 1s and O 1s peaks are also presented to give an indicati...