Martin Willis, Nalco Ltd
Erosion-corrosion is a significant issue to the oil and gas industry, playing a major role in the accelerated internal wear of infrastructure. The difficulty with predicting wear rates in an erosion-corrosion environment is due to the synergistic effects observed. Not only are there corrosion and erosion rates, but it is also accepted that there is erosion effected corrosion and corrosion effected erosion. While test methods have been developed in the past they have not always been successful in reproducing the synergistic conditions. This paper presents a benchtop test apparatus that has been developed and proven to study corrosion inhibitor performance under sweet erosion-corrosion conditions. Control testing determines the three key rates; corrosion, erosion and erosion-corrosion, which are then used to evaluate the performance of corrosion inhibitors.