Recent work has addressed some of the principal properties of corrosion inhibitors and how these
properties impact the ultimate fate of an inhibitor in a production system. Specifically, affinities of
various corrosion inhibitors for sand, iron sulfide, barium sulfate, iron carbonate and emulsion drop
surfaces were presented.1 This paper will report the behaviors and performance of selected corrosion
inhibitors in the presence of elemental sulfur. The knowledge will help us gain a better understanding of
how corrosion inhibitors work in the presence of elemental sulfur and thus allowing us to design the
next generation of corrosion inhibitors that effectively inhibited corrosion in high sour system
containing elemental sulfur. The following work will explore corrosion inhibitor’s adsorption
characteristic to elemental sulfur, the ability of corrosion inhibitors to mitigate corrosion under
elemental sulfur and finally the potential of corrosion inhibitors disperse elemental sulfur into an
aqueous phase.
KEYWORDS: elemental sulfur, hydrogen sulfide, sour gas, carbon steel, corrosion inhibitor, under
deposit, sulfur dispersion, corrosion inhibitor adsorption