Environmental concern about chlorinated organic compounds generated from traditional bleach plants has led to a development of new environmentally friendly bleaching processes, Recently, the development of ozone bleaching has progressed from pilot operations to production scale installations. Ozone is currently used as a bleaching agent of pulp as a replacement for chlorine based bleaching chemicals. Yet, there are few articles which are dealing with ozone and its effect to corrosion resistance of stainless steels or any other construction materials used in bleaching equipment. In this paper corrosion behavior of austenitic stainless steels, grades AISI 316, AISI 317LNM, UNS S31254 and UNS 32654 PM, were studied in simulated ozone bleaching environments. The laboratory tests showed that in ozone environments without chlorides the corrosion resistance of AISI 316 was superior to that of the high-alloyed stainless steels, due to the relatively low amount of alloying
elements. The sequence was reversed in ozone environments containing chlorides. In the presence of chlorides AISI 316 was susceptible to localized corrosion whereas the high-alloyed UNS S31254 and UNS S 32654PM were resistant to localized corrosion in all chloride concentrations examined.
Keywords: Ozone, pulp bleaching, stainless steels, corrosion.