The aggressive behavior of carbonic acid solutions upon various steels has been widely investigated, but is yet not fully understood. In order to achieve more knowledge of the mechanisms of CO2 corrosion, simultaneous diffusion and homogeneouschemical reactions have been simulated close to a corroding iron electrode, using kinetic data for the reactions involving CO2-related species and water. Many CO2 corrosion models predict mass transfer across the stagnant diffusion layer without
considering contributions from homogeneous chemical reactions.
However, such reactions play a significant role when the equilibria of the CO2/H2O system are disturbed by concentration changes caused by diffusion. Attempts have been made to treat this phenomenon, using equilibrium constants in the routines involving chemical terms. Still, this thermodynamic approach fails to determine the concentration changes caused by chemical reactions, as equilibria will not always be obtained.
The recent model simulates the conditions in the stagnant layer close to a dissolving iron surface, on which heterogeneous reduction...
Keywords: CO2 corrosion, mass transport, reaction kinetics, modeling.