Corrosion studies are particularly important, malady as it is well known that corrosion problems constitute the major operating difficulty in gas treating plants and have caused unscheduled downtime, cheap production losses, capsule and reduced equipment life. Consequently, corrosion prevention or minimization can be regarded as the cornerstone of any successful CO2 separation technology. It is our goal to perform studies in order to obtain a fundamental understanding of corrosion mechanisms under a variety of operating conditions with a view to formulating an efficient and cost effective control strategy. In general, regenerators, reboilers, and rich-lean exchangers are the areas most susceptible to severe corrosion. Both uniform and localized corrosion take place in the plants, but stress corrosion cracking, pitting, and erosion corrosion are the dominating mechanisms. Although a great deal of work has been conducted to study the corrosion mechanisms for the CO2 environment, the mechanisms are still not well understood. However, it has been observed that the parameters contributing to corrosiveness are dissolved CO2, dissolved O2, type of solvents, degradation products, temperature, and solution velocity.
To tackle the corrosion problem, we study detailed corrosion behaviour in gas treating reactive solutions with and without additives. We focus on a search program for corrosion inhibitors that could be used to lower the corrosion rates in these systems, in addition to our study of the corrosion mechanisms and the effects of factors such as solvent compositions, temperature, flow velocity, and CO2 and O2 partial pressures on corrosion rate. These studies are currently conducted in the laboratory-scale corrosion testing units and also will be conducted in the Technology Development Plant, which has provisions for on-line monitoring of corrosion rates.