Internal pitting corrosion of steel occurring under a layer of solid sands constitutes an essential threat to the integrity of the pipeline system in petroleum production. In this work, micro-electrochemical
techniques, including localized electrochemical impedance spectroscopy and scanning vibrating electrode technique, were used to characterize in-situ the pitting corrosion processes of an X80 steel in
CO2-saturated NaCl solutions. Results demonstrated that corrosion pits could initiate and grow on the steel, which is covered with a layer of sands. With the increase of test time, pits keep growing, resulting
in a drop of local impedance and an increase of the peak current density. Moreover, the increase of chloride concentration in the solution and the solution flow velocity favors the growth of corrosion pits.
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Keywords: Internal pitting corrosion, pipeline steel, sands, micro-electrochemical measurements