Black Powder Erosion in Sales Gas Pipeline Bends
Authors: Dr. Ehab Elsaadawy and Dr. Abdelmounam M. Sherik
ABSTRACT
Computational Fluid Dynamics (CFDs) modeling of
diluted solid-gas flow through a 90° sales gas pipeline
bend is presented in this article. The solid particles used
mimic the size and distribution of the “black powder”
(BP) found in Saudi Aramco sales gas pipelines. Black
powder is the name given to the solid grayish material
that is found inside most, if not all, sales gas pipelines
worldwide. Because of its hardness and jagged features,
BP can cause a serious threat to the integrity of gas
pipelines. An experimental program was developed to
determine the erosion resistance of the bend material so
the erosion rate can be computed; however, the details
of that experimental program and the corresponding
results are not the subject of the current article and
therefore are not presented.
The focus of this article is to present the computa-
tional prediction of the erosion rate in sales gas pipeline
bends under different gas flow rates and bend turn radii
along with flow field variables for both phases, namely,
the gas and the BP particles. The pipeline bend under
study has a pipe diameter of 36” with ratios of the bend
radius of the curvature to the pipeline diameter of 1.5
and 3. The gas flow rate values considered result in
pipeline average velocities of 5.0 meters per second
(m/s), 10 m/s and 20 m/s.
The software Fluent 6.3 was used to solve the
Reynolds Averaged Navier-Stokes (RANS) equations
and predict the erosion rate. The continuous phase, gas,
was modeled using the Eulerian approach while the
dispersed phase, BP particles, was modeled using the
Lagrangian approach, which is based on the calculation
of the trajectory of several individual solid particles
through the flow field. The motion of the tracked particles
is taken to describe the average behavior of the dis-
persed phase. To account for the influence of turbulent
fluid fluctuations on particle motion, the stochastic
tracking Discrete Random Walk (DRW) model is used.
The particle effect on the gas flow is neglected, i.e., one-
way coupling. The Dispersed Phase Model (DPM) of
Fluent is used as the particle loading ratio is very small,
typically less than 0.01. Five simultaneous particle
injections, representing actual field conditions, were
released from the inlet of the pipeline and tracked. The
particle diameters are 2, 4, 7.5, 12.5 and 20 microns. To
resolve the flow turbulence, the standard k-e turbulence
model with enhanced wall functions is used. The
removal of wall material due to erosion (erosion rate) is
calculated using the Finnie model developed for ductile
materials and implemented into Fluent. The math-
ematical model was validated against published
experimental data.
The validation process showed a good agreement
between the model and the experimental data. The
profiles of both mean velocity and fluctuations, of the gas
phase and the particles, along with the corresponding
erosion rates, are presented. The results show that a
larger radius of a curvature bend has a more uniformly
distributed erosion rate over its surface area. In addition,
BP has negligible erosive effects, even in a pipeline
bend with a radius of curvature to a pipe diameter ratio
of 1.5. The current study is the first of its kind to
investigate BP erosive effects on pipeline bends.
INTRODUCTION
In the oil and gas industry, Black Powder (BP) is the
catchall name that is used to describe the grayish
material found inside most, if not all, sales gas pipelines
worldwide. Black powder can be found in several forms,
such as wet with a tar-like appearance or dry in the form
1-5
of a very fine powder . It is composed of different forms
of iron sulfide (FeS), iron oxides (Fe3O4, FeOOH) and
iron carbonate (FeCO3), mechanically mixed or
chemically combined with any number of contaminants,
such as salts, sand, liquid hydrocarbons, metal debris,
and even naturally occurring radioactive material
2
(NORM) .
Once BP exists and is moving with the flow, it can
represent a serious threat to the integrity of the gas
pipelines by eroding compressor components and
pipeline control valves, plugging metering instrument-
tation and filters, and reducing the accuracy of the in-line
inspection. Also, BP could have major adverse effects
on customers by contaminating the customers’ sales gas
supply leading to interruptions of the customers’ opera-
tions and/or poor quality of products in which the sales
3
gas is used as feedstock . Although BP erosion itself
was not the subject of any research work the authors are
aware of, many hours of research was devoted to the
solid particle erosion of pipelines and pipeline bends.
The main drive of studying solid particle erosion in
pipelines and pipeline bends was not BP erosion rather;
it was pneumatic conveying systems — which are
applied widely in modern industries — which are
processing solid materials.
SAUDI ARAMCO JOURNAL OF TECHNOLOGY FALL 2010
 6, 7
The required fluid velocity has been determined to
entrain and carry away BP in liquid and gas pipelines,
respectively. These two studies concluded that the
velocity — required to move BP particles in gas pipelines
— is independent of particle size and ranges from 10.4 ft
per second (fps) to 13.6 fps for 8” and 30” pipelines,
respectively. In liquid pipelines, the water velocity re-
quired depends on the equivalent particle size, up to a
size of about 5.0 mils, after which it depends only on the
pipe diameter.
Many researchers addressed the features of gas
solid pipe flow affecting transportation. These studies
include the fluid turbulence, the lift force due to the shear
flow, the Magnus effect on rotating particles, particle
interactions, particle wall collisions, particle size and
shape, pipe roughness and gravitational settling. The
effect of the drag coefficient and inlet conditions (inlet
velocity profile) of solid particles — on the particle tracks
calculations in vertical and horizontal ducts — are
8
studied using the commercial computational fluid dy-
namics (CFDs) package, CFX 4.4. They found that the
drag coefficient needs to be reduced by as much as 35%
of the standard value to achieve good agreement with
the corresponding experimental data in case of a vertical
channel flow. On the other hand, for a horizontal channel
flow it needs to be reduced only 20% to achieve similar
agreement. Regarding the velocity inlet conditions, it
8
was reported that the vertical turbulent flow seems to be
insensitive to the inlet conditions while for a horizontal
flow it is found to be strongly dependent on inlet
conditions.
9 16
CFD simulations have been performed on a diluted
particulate turbulent flow in a 90° duct bend with a radius
of curvature equal to a 1.5 duct (225 mm) hydraulic
8
diameter. As in previous work , simulations were per-
formed using CFX 4.4, using the differential Reynolds
stress model (DRSM) with fully developed inlet condi-
tions to solve the turbulent flow in the bend, and also
used the same test facility to produce the experimental
10
data used in validating the simulations. In another work
the author used different solid size distributions rather
than a single uniform particle size, and also made use of
a modified shear-slip lift force formula, which is consis-
tent with experimental data for . From
8, 9
these studies , it was concluded that the DRSM did not
capture the correct pressure gradient effects within the
bend. Also, it was found that even the finer particles (66
micron) experienced a gas-solid segregation due to the
centrifugal effect. This segregation was characterized by
a local drop in particle concentration near the inner wall
and was well reflected in predictions where the averaged
velocity profiles discontinued in the locality. The
10
experimental part of the study is reported in more
11
detail .
Although CFD based erosion modeling can be
applied to predict erosion in many complex geometries,
its accuracy is questionable for some applications. To
assess the viability and accuracy, a comparison between
computed and measured particle velocities and erosion,
in both water and air flows, in a direct impact test section
12
was performed . Also, erosion models other than the
one that is built into Fluent were used and examined by
SAUDI ARAMCO JOURNAL OF TECHNOLOGY FALL 2010
implementing them into Fluent using a user defined
function (UDF). It was found that for a sand/water flow in
a direct impact test, not like sand/air, the particle impact
velocity is much lower than the velocity of the slurry jet
and varies by a wide range. Also, they found that among
the erosion models tested, the Erosion-Corrosion
Research Center erosion model and Oka’s et al. erosion
13, 14
model are more accurate within the scope of their
work. In FLUENT 6, the near-wall effect is not taken into
account when computing the particle tracking and the
particles are handled the same way as those in regions
away from the wall. Also, in FLUENT 6 and some other
codes, the particles are assumed to have zero volume
when deciding whether a particle hits the wall. In an
effort to enhance the current CFD based erosion
modeling, a couple of modifications using user defined
1
functions were introduced into the CFD code FLUENT
6. The first includes the standard wall function effect
when a particle is moving in the near-wall region, and
the second is the rebound point of the particle at a
particle radius away from the wall. It was found that the
FLUENT 6 built-in erosion model predicts accurately the
erosion due to rounded sand particles of large size, 256
µm. On the other hand, for 25 µm sharp sand particles it
over predicts the erosion by a factor of 17-78, which is
reduced by a factor of 2 when applying the standard wall
function effect in the near-wall region particle tracking
computations.
To evaluate the performance of elbows and plugged
tees geometries under erosive service conditions and
15
using the experimental data to validate the simulation
results, a procedure was developed to predict erosion
in standard elbows, long radius elbows, and plugged
tees. This procedure is implemented into the CFD code
CFX 4.2. The relative erosion severity between plugged
tees and elbows under diluted gas/liquid-solid flow
conditions have been studied, computationally and
17
experimentally. From this study , it was shown that the
relative erosion severity is greatly affected by the type of
the carrier fluid (liquid or gas) properties as simulations
showed that for water-sand flows in plugged tees cause
more erosion than in elbows while for air-sand flows
erosion in plugged tees is found to be two orders of
magnitude less than erosion in standard elbows. In
18
another study it was shown that the longer the radius
of curvature of the elbow, the less the erosion it
experiences due to solid particle impact.
Not only the radius of curvature that affects the
erosion but also the elbow (bend) orientation was found
to have a large effect on particle motion, and therefore
19
erosion rates as shown in another study .
Samples of the BP collected from Saudi Aramco
sales gas systems were analyzed and characterized.
Based on that study, it was found that Magnetite (Fe3O4)
powder is considered a reasonable substitute of the BP
for erosion studies as it has similar mechanical
properties. Erosion resistance of different materials
under the erosion effects of Magnetite was determined
experimentally. The details and the results of that study
is not the subject of this article and will be published
elsewhere. In the current study, flow and erosion of
Magnetite powder in pipeline bends are studied.
GEOMETRY AND FLOW CONDITIONS
STUDIED
The pipeline bend under study is a standard 90° bend
that has a 36” pipe diameter, D. The ratios studied of the
bend radius of curvature, R, to the pipeline diameter are
1.5 and 3. The bend has a 240” inlet horizontal pipe and
an 80” vertical outlet pipe. The gas phase used in the
current study is a typical Saudi Aramco natural gas at
operating conditions with a mass density, , of 61.8
3 -5
kg/m and a dynamic viscosity, , of 1.33 x 1 Pa.s. The
gas flow rates considered resulted in bulk gas velocities,
of 5.0 meters per second (m/s), 10 m/s and 20 m/s.
The BP (Magnetite) has a mass density, of 5,150
3
kg/m and was released at a rate of 2.4 gallons per
second (g/s) into the stream. Particle sizes and
corresponding mass flow rates are summarized in Table
1. The corresponding Reynolds numbers and particle
volumetric loading ratio is very small, typically less than
10%, therefore, the flow was dealt with as a diluted gas-
solid multiphase flow, and therefore, the Dispersed
Phase Model (DPM) of Fluent was used. The continuous
phase, gas, was modeled using the Eulerian approach
while the dispersed phase, particles, was modeled using
the Lagrangian approach. The Lagrangian approach is
based on the calculation of the trajectory of several
individual solid particles through the flow field. The
motion of the tracked particles is used to describe the
average behavior of the dispersed phase.
The governing equations of the continuous phase
are the incompressible continuity and momentum
equations as shown below.

     0
(1)
 
t

        p  .    T  g  (2)

Stokes numbers are summarized in Table 2.

To resolve the flow turbulence, the standard k-ɛ
(µm) (g/s) turbulence model with enhanced wall functions is used.
The equations of turbulent kinetic energy, k, and
2 0.143 turbulent dissipation, ɛ, are:
4 0.372
k      
7.5 1.25  . k   .   t k   Gk   (3)
12.5 0.476
t   k  
20 0.153        
 .     .   t    C 1 Gk  C 2   (4)
Table 1. Particle sizes and the corresponding mass flow rates
t     k

1 2
where k   u      w  ,   2 t eij eij , the Reynolds
2 2
(µm)
5 m/s 10 m/s 20 m/s 2 
 i  j
2 2.13E+07 4.26E+07 8.53E+07 stress tensor eij   , the turbulent viscosity
4 2.13E+07 4.26E+07 8.53E+07
x j xi
7.5
12.5
2.13E+07
2.13E+07
4.26E+07
4.26E+07
8.53E+07
8.53E+07
t  c
k2

 
 

2 
3

, and Gk  t  .    T  . 3t .  k  .

20 2.13E+07 4.26E+07 8.53E+07 The standard values of the (empirical) constants in

the k-ε model are:
c  0.09 ,  k  1.0 ,    1.30 , c 1  1.44 , and c 2  1.92 .
While setting up the Lagrangian tracking and erosion
5 m/s 10 m/s 20 m/s model, the following assumptions have been made:
2 4.71E-04 9.41E-04 1.88E-03 • Only the influence of turbulent fluid fluctuations
4 1.88E-03 3.76E-03 7.53E-03 on particle motion was considered using the
7.5 6.62E-03 1.32E-02 2.65E-02
stochastic tracking Discrete Random Walk
(DRW) model. The particle-particle interactions
12.5 1.84E-02 3.68E-02 7.35E-02 are neglected and any change of the flow
20 4.71E-02 9.41E-02 1.88E-01 turbulence caused by the particles is not
accounted for, i.e., one-way coupling.
Table 2. Reynolds and particle Stokes numbers of the cases • Nonreacting and non-fragmentation particles are
studied
considered.
• The geometry modifications, caused by the
MATHEMATICAL MODEL removal of wall by the solid particles, have been
neglected. This observation means that the
The commercial CFD software FLUENT 6.3 was used to computational model geometry during simulation
solve the Reynolds Averaged Navier-Stokes (RANS) was invariable.
equations and predict the erosion rates. The particle To obtain a reasonable statistical distribution and to

SAUDI ARAMCO JOURNAL OF TECHNOLOGY FALL 2010

reduce scatter in erosion predictions, a large number of
particles are normally required to perform the particle
tracking. Each particle is tracked through the flow
domain separately, and the particle-wall interaction
information is then recorded and used to calculate the
erosion.
The particle trajectory is determined by integrating
the force balance on the particle. This force balance
equates the particle inertia with the forces acting on the
particle, Newton’s second law. This equation can be
written as:

d p  transiently tracked. The particles were released at a
mp
dt
 F (5)
where is the particle mass, is the particle velocity
vector, is an external force acting on the particle. The
forces acting on a particle can be the drag force, the
buoyancy (gravitational settling) force, the pressure
gradient force, the added mass force, the Brownian
diffusion (motion), the Saffman lift force, the Basset
force, and the rotating reference frame force. For small
particles with a density ratio of much greater than
one, only the drag force and the gravitational settling
force will impact the trajectory of the particle while other
forces will be negligibly small. Along a particle trajectory,
the equation of motion, to be integrated, can be reduced
to the following form:
d p g ( p   )
dt

 FD    p   p
(6).
The drag force per unit mass can be expressed as
where is the particle
Reynolds number and is the
drag coefficient.
Although Eqn. 6 is linear, the fluid velocity along the
particle trajectory must be known to solve it. As the
velocity depends on the particle path itself, the general
solution in even a simple turbulent flow is not possible.
During particle trajectory calculation, the particle-wall
interaction information, such as impact speed, impact
angle, and impact location as well as impact intensity is
stored. This information is then applied to the appro-
priate erosion equation(s) to compute the erosion. In
FLUENT 6.3, the removal of wall material due to erosion
(erosion rate) is calculated using a model based on the
Finnie model developed for ductile materials and
implemented. The erosion model used is given in the
following form :
20
(7)
where is the erosion rate given in units of mass
of target material removed per unit area per unit time,
is the particle mass flow rates, and is the area of
the cell face at the wall. The functions and g(α)
SAUDI ARAMCO JOURNAL OF TECHNOLOGY FALL 2010
must be specified in consistent units to build a dimen-
sionless group with the relative particle velocity and its
exponent.
In the ANSYS Fluent model, Eqn.7, g(α) is an
empirical polynomial function of the particle impact
angle, which allows for simulation of ductile erosive
systems (i.e., particles that impact the surface at a
shallow angle will cause a higher erosion rate than
particles that impact the wall at higher angles).
In the current study, five simultaneous particle
injections, representing actual field conditions, Table 1,
were released from the inlet of the pipeline to be
velocity equal to that of the gas and with a uniform
distribution as well.
To take into account the effect of turbulence velocity
fluctuations on particle trajectories, the stochastic DRW
model of Fluent was used.
VALIDATION OF THE MATHEMATICAL
MODEL
11
The published experimental data was used to validate
the mathematical model, studying a diluted gas-solid
flow through a curved 90° duct bend. The curved bend is
squared-section (15 cm x 15 cm) and has a radius of
curvature, R of 1.5 times the duct hydraulic diameter, D,
(22.5 cm). The bend has a 3.5 m horizontal inlet duct
and a 1.8 m vertical straight duct. Gas phase and air
measurements were obtained using a Laser Doppler
Anemometer (LDA) at a bulk gas velocity , of 10 m/s
in the absence of solid phase. The solid phase, which is
glass spheres with an average diameter of 66 µm, was
released into the flow from a fluidized bed. The solids/
gas mass loading ratio reached is well below 1%, so as
to setup a diluted gas-solid flow regime. For more details
about the experimental setup used and the procedures,
11
see Yang, W. and Kuan, B. .
The case was solved using FLUENT 6.3 and a user
defined function (UDF) was created for post-processing
of particle parameters, specifically, sampling the particle
velocities at any section of the domain. A mesh inde-
5
pendent solution was achieved on a 9 x 10 nodal points
mesh.
Figure 1 shows the velocity contours of the gas
phase on the symmetry plane of the duct while Fig. 2
presents the particle tracks, colored by velocity magni-
tude, of particles released at the inlet. Mean velocity
profiles along the symmetry plane and at different angles
from the inlet plane are shown in Fig. 3. The model
captures the gas velocities fairly good, particularly in the
vicinity of the walls where interaction with particles takes
place and erosion develops only at 75° from the inlet and
into the bend where the predicted profile does not
capture the right slope, shear stress, at the inner wall of
the bend. At this location, flow is decelerating due to the
adverse pressure gradient and flow will start to separate
and a secondary flow is formed at the outlet on the inner
wall as can be seen from the velocity contours, Fig. 1.
The UDF used for post-processing calculates an
average velocity magnitude for particles in a domain and
Fig. 1. Gas velocity contours in the symmetry plane.

Fig. 3. Gas velocity profiles inside the bend.

Fig. 2. Particle tracks colored by velocity magnitude.

stores this average in a user defined memory (UDM) for

post-processing afterwards. As a particle passes through
a cell, the UDF is called and calculates the velocity
magnitude and appends it to an average for the cell the
particle is leaving. Therefore, the more particles, the
better and more meaningful the average, and conse-
quently in regions with low particle concentrations, the
average can be unrealistic. In post-processing, the
authors excluded those values where the particle
concentrations were very low, Fig. 4. One can still see
that the model reasonably captured the particle velocity
magnitudes that are used in erosion predictions.

RESULTS AND DISCUSSION

For a pipeline bend of the velocity vectors
along the vertical symmetry plane are presented in Fig.
5. The left to right flow of the bend has a gas bulk
velocity of 20 m/s. One can see from the velocity
contours that flow accelerates close to the inner wall as Fig. 4. Particle velocity profiles inside the bend.

SAUDI ARAMCO JOURNAL OF TECHNOLOGY FALL 2010

 Fig. 7. Contours of velocity magnitudes at different planes
Fig. 5. Velocity vectors in the symmetry plane, R/D = 1.5. along the pipeline bend, R/D = 3.

it enters the pipeline bend due to the favorable pressure
gradient at that part of the wall while it decelerates at the
outer wall due to the adverse pressure gradient. This
behavior starts to reverse after the bend midpoint, i.e., at
a 45° plane. Figure 6 shows the locations of different
profiles and contours.
files, Fig. 9 shows a similar trend and for a closer
inspection, a comparison between gas and particle
velocity profiles at two different cross sections of the
pipeline bend (30° and 60° from inlet plane) is presented
in Fig. 10. The Figure shows that particles follow the gas
with negligible slip except at the 60° plane where they
deviate noticeably close to the outer wall of the bend.
The gas decelerates at that wall due to the adverse
pressure gradient while particles lag in response and
continue to move with higher velocities.

Fig. 6. Bend cross sectional geometry, vertical symmetry

plane.

Although the inner wall of the bend encounters a

higher velocity stream, it is the outer wall of the bend
that encounters a high erosion rate due to the impact
angles of particles.
The gas phase velocity contours at different planes
of a bend are shown in Fig. 7 and the corre-
sponding velocity profiles, at 15°, 30°, 45°, 60° and 75°
are presented in Fig. 8. Similar to the sharper bend,
flow accelerates at the inner wall up to 45°,
and then starts to decelerate while the opposite takes
Fig. 8. Gas phase velocity profiles at different planes.
place at the outer wall. For particle mean velocity pro-

SAUDI ARAMCO JOURNAL OF TECHNOLOGY FALL 2010

 The erosion contours as predicted by Fluent for a
pipeline bend of Fig. 11, where it can be seen
that the maximum erosion takes place at the midpoint,
along the symmetry plane of the bend, or the location
where velocity profiles start reverse behavior. Using a
longer radius of a curvature pipeline bend redistributes
the erosion rates more uniformly over the outer wall area
of the bend as compared to the shorter radius of a
curvature bend as can be seen from the comparison of
the erosion rate contours of two bends, and
Fig. 12. The erosion rates for BP are found to
be negligibly small for the conditions considered in the
current study.

Fig. 9. Particle mean velocity profiles.

Fig. 11. Erosion contours on the wall of the standard bend.

Fig. 10. Comparison between gas and particle velocity profiles

Fig. 12. Erosion rate contours for pipeline bends (R/D = 1.5
at two different cross sections of the pipeline bend (30° and
and 3.0).
60° from inlet plane).
SAUDI ARAMCO JOURNAL OF TECHNOLOGY FALL 2010
CONCLUSION
Diluted solid-gas flow modeling using the Discrete Phase
Model of FLUENT 6.3 was performed for pipelined
bends of and under typical field
operating conditions. The turbulence effects on the
trajectories of the particles are accounted for by means
of the stochastic DRW model of Fluent while particle-
particle interaction and particle effect on the continuous
phase (gas) are neglected. The standard k-ɛ turbulence
model with enhanced wall functions was used. The main
focus in the current work is on the mean velocities of
both gas phase and solid phase and the erosion rate.
From the results one can conclude that although the
erosion rate is negligibly small under the conditions
studied, a pipeline bend with a longer radius of curvature
will have a more uniformly distributed erosion area over
the area of the bend, which makes it a better candidate
for applications with an erosive type of service, such as
sales gas pipelines loaded with BP.
The mathematical model and erosion treatment in
the current study can be extended to predict the erosion
in globe control valves mounted on sales gas pipelines
and suffering from BP erosion damage.
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
The authors would like to thank the management of
Saudi Aramco for permission to present and publish this
article. We would also like to extend our appreciation to
Dr. Benny Kuan of CSIRO, Australia for providing the
experimental data used in validating the mathematical
model used in the current study.
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BIOGRAPHIES
Dr. Ehab Elsaadawy joined the R&DC
in July 2008, as a Sr. Lab Scientist in
the R&DD Materials Performance
Group (MPG) leading the activity of the
computational study of the erosive
effects of black powder in sales gas
pipelines. Later he joined the
Computational Modeling Group (CMG)
at its inception in May 2009 and recently joined the
Crude Oil Separation project, working on enhancing the
understanding and prediction capability of the
multiphase separation vessel performance.
Ehab completed his B.S. and M.S. degrees in
Mechanical Engineering at Alexandria University,
Alexandria, Egypt. After completing his Ph.D. in
Aerospace Engineering at Old Dominion University,
Norfolk, VA, he had a couple of postdoctoral fellowships
in the Chemical Engineering Department and also the
Material Science and Engineering Department at
McMaster University, Ontario, Canada, where he taught
undergraduate engineering courses. Before joining
Saudi Aramco, Ehab worked for the Atomic Energy of
Canada Ltd. (AECL) as a Thermal Hydraulics Analyst
assessing the performance of their thermal hydraulic
codes used in the nuclear industry.
Ehab has written over 20 journal and conference
publications covering computational modeling of
multiphase flow, jet impingement, experimental turbulent
free shear flows, and electronic cooling.
Dr. Abdelmounam M. Sherik joined
Saudi Aramco in 2004 and is currently
working for Saudi Aramco’s Research
and Development Center (R&DC).
Prior to joining Saudi Aramco, he held
several research and engineering
positions in Canada. Abdelmounam
has over 20 years of professional
experience in the areas of materials and corrosion.
He received his B.S. degree in Materials Science
and Engineering from Tripoli University, Tripoli, Libya
and his M.S. and Ph.D. degrees in Materials and
Metallurgical Engineering from Queen’s University,
Kingston, Ontario, Canada.
Abdelmounam has authored or coauthored more
than 50 publications in the corrosion of sales gas
pipelines and nano-structured coatings. He is an active
member of the National Association of Corrosion
Engineers (NACE) where he is the Chair of the 2010
Corrosion in Gas Treating Symposium and also the
Chair of the Black Powder in Gas Pipelines Technology
Exchange Group.
SAUDI ARAMCO JOURNAL OF TECHNOLOGY FALL 2010