At first glance, the need to explore and develop hydrocarbon gas fields which contain high CO2 contents (up to 80 mole %) would call for the use of expensive corrosion resistant alloys. This would have the
potential to render project development costs untenable. An alternative approach would be to evaluate
the technical feasibility of using carbon steels. Unlike transportation and sequestration of supercritical
CO2, where the amount of water is normally negligible or comes from condensation, field development
has to consider the presence of formation water. This water has the potential to contain multiple
corrosive species. In addition to the action of such species during carbon steel corrosion, evaluations that
involve the effect of flow on corrosion rates are required as flow has the possible effects of challenging
the protectiveness of the corrosion product films and increasing the mass transfer rates close to the pipe
wall.
In the present study, flow-sensitive CO2 corrosion has been investigated using a high-pressure hightemperature rotating cylinder electrode (RCE) autoclave and a pipe flow loop system. Corrosion rates
are measured via weight loss and by electrochemical methods at various pH’s (3 to 5), temperatures (25
to 50°C), near critical and supercritical CO2 partial pressures and at equivalent fluid velocities from 0 to 1.5 m/s.
Keywords: Supercritical CO2, rotating cylinder electrode, flow-sensitive corrosion