Erosion - corrosion

• Damage that occurs when corrosion contributes

to erosion by removing protective films/scales or
by exposing metal surface to further corrosion
under combined action of erosion and corrosion.
• Metals,alloys,refractories
• Metal loss rates depend on velocity and
concentration of impacting medium, impacting
articles size and hardness, angle of impact,
hardness and corrosion resistant of material
subject to corrosion.
• Softer alloys of CU,AL subject to metal loss under
high velocity conditions
• For each environment and metal condition,
threshold velocity above which impacting
medium produce metal loss
• Metal loss depends on
size,shape,density,hardness of impacting medium
• Metal removed from surface as dissolved ions or
solid corrosion products which are swept away
from metal surface
 Affected Equipment
• Equipment exposed to moving fluids/catalyst
• Piping particularly at bends,elbows,pumps,blowers,heat
exchanger tubing,propellers,impellers,turbine blades,nozzles
• erosion by particles carried by liquid (slurry) like catalyst
movement in FCC,coke handling equipment in fluidized bed
cokers
• Crude unit piping exposed to naphthenic acids,sulfur content
 Appearance
• Erosion-corrosion seen by loss in thickness in
form of pits,groove,rounded holes and valleys
 prevention
• Increase pipe diameter to decrease velocity,
streamlining bends to reduce
impingement,increase wall thickness
• increase substrate thickness (hard alloys),surface
hardening treatments
• Alter process environment to reduce corrosivity
(deaeration)
• Heat exchangers use impingement plates to
minimize erosion
• High Mo contain alloys to improve resistant to
naphthenic acid corrosion
 Inspection
• Visual examination,UT checks
• IR scans to detect refractory loss on stream
 Erosion-corrosion: Mechanism
• Cavitation,liquid impingemen erosion,fretting
 Corrosion under insulation (CUI)
• Steel pipe-protective coating-insulation-
weather barrier
• Corrosion of piping,pressure vessels,structural
components from water trapped under
insulation
• Carbon steel,low alloy steel,300 ss,duplex
stainless steel
• Affects- -12 c to 175 c for carbon and low alloy
steel; 60c to 205c stainless steel
• CUI increases with increase metal
temperature, severe at 100 c 120 c where
water vaporize and insulation stays wet longer
• Insulation material which hold water not used
• Equipment operates below water dewpoint
condense water increase cui
• Environments contain air contaminants as
chlorides,so2 inc cui
 appearance
• Carbon and low alloy steels – local
pitting,localised loss in thickness
• 300 SS subject to stress corrosion cracking,if
chlorides are present, duplex ss less
susceptible
 prevention
• Use paints/coatings, maintain insulation
barriers to prevent moisture enter
• Flame sprayed Al coatings use on carbon
steels- coating corrodes preferentially by
gakvanic action and protects base metal
• Al foil wrapped in SS pipes
 Chloride stress corrosion cracking
(SCC)
• Surface initiated cracks caused by envionmental
cracking of 300 SS, Ni based alloy due to tensile
stress,temperature,aqueous chloride environment.
• Dissolved oxygen presence inc cracking
• 300 SS – suspectible, duplex ss – more resistant
• Inc temp,inc chloride – inc cracking
• SCC occurs at pH above 2
• Ni based alloys- highly resistant but not immune
 Affected eqipment
• 300 ss piping,pressure vessel components,
• Drains in hydro processing units,bellows and
instrument tubing with hydrogen recycle
streams affected
• Cracking in boiler drain lines
 appearance
• Cracks appear on surface
• Fracture surface have brittle appearance
 prevention
• Use resistant material for construction
• When hydrotesting use low cl content water
• Design should not allow stagnant regionwhere
chloride can depoist
 Hydrochloric acid corrosion
• Vapors containing water and hcl condense from
overhead stream of distillation,fractionation
tower,first water condense is highly acidic and
promote high corrosion rates
• Hcl concentration inc ,temp inc , inc
corrosion,alloy composition
• HCl is normally not corrosive but very corrosive
where water is available to hcl acid
• Carbon steel,low alloy steels excess corrosive
when ph below 4.5
• 300 ss not resistant to any hcl level
 Affected equipment
• Crude unit,hydro processing units,catalytic
reforming units
 Wet h2s damage (blistering)
• Hydrogen blistering
Form as surface bulges on ID,OD of
pipe/pressure vessel,
• Hydrogen induced cracking
• Stress oriented hydrogen induced cracking
• Sulfide stress cracking