Mitigation of Elemental Sulfur and Iron Sulfide Under-Deposit Corrosion

Available for download

Production of highly sour oil and gas fields has increased recently, which introduces new challenges for
corrosion control. In recent years, some unexpected and unexplained pipeline failures have occurred,
resulting in complex investigations and laboratory corrosion performance testing studies to assess the
inhibitors that are applied in these environments. While some of these failures are due to cracking in
sour environments which are prevented by alternative material selection or different operation pipeline
maintenance, we were specifically looking at cases where chemical inhibitors could be used to mitigate
corrosion.

Product Number: 51323-19423-SG

Author: Sherman Kung, Nolan Miller, Feras EI Yaakobi, Jeremy Moloney

Publication Date: 2023

Member Price: $0.00

Non Member Price: $20.00

Price: $20.00

Qty:

Elemental sulfur deposition commonly occurs in sour gas pipelines, especially from high H2S reservoirs.
In aqueous environments, contact of solid sulfur with mild steel can result in aggressive corrosion due
to sulfur’s oxidizing capability. Iron sulfide is formed on the internal pipeline surface as a corrosion
product of carbon steel in an environment containing H2S. Corrosion caused by deposited elemental
sulfur can be further accelerated in the presence of iron sulfide due to its semiconductive nature.
Currently, there is minimal prior literature on the corrosion caused by the deposition of both iron sulfide
and elemental sulfur in combination. This study was performed to further investigate the effect of iron
sulfide and elemental sulfur corrosion of mild steel using an autoclave design to simulate an underdeposit
corrosion mechanism. The development of a new effective inhibitor for corrosion and pitting
protection in the presence of sulfur and iron sulfide under sour conditions will also be described.