Characterization of corrosion in the oil and gas industry is becoming of increasing importance for safety reasons as well as for the preservation of production facilitie; to prevent down time and damage to the
environment. This article presents the methodology used by our company to characterize the corrosion behavior of the whole production facility, taking into consideration the hydrodynamic and thermodynamic conditions of the produced fluids (flow velocities, flow pattern, liquid holdup, pressure, temperature, etc.) as they flow from the reservoir through the surface installations (flowlines, gas/oil gathering and transmission lines, gas processing plants, artificial lift systems, etc.). The methodology uses Petroleum Engineering and Two-Phase modeling techniques to: 1) optimize the entire production system to obtain the most etlicient objective flow rate taking into consideration the corrosive/erosive nature of the produced fluid and 2) characterize the corrosive nature of the produced fluid as it flows through the above mentioned installations. The modeling techniques were performed using commercially available simulators and CO2 corrosion rates were determined using well known published correlations. For H2S corrosion,
NACE MR0175 criteria is applied. The application of this methodology has allowed corrosion control strategies, protection and monitoring criteria, inhibitor optimization and increased the effectiveness of already existing corrosion control systems.
Key Words: Modeling, Two-phase flow, Corrosion Control, Flow Velocity