Corrosion of stainless steel components in seawater reverse osmosis desalination plants—investigations on adapted internal cathodic protection

Corrosion of stainless steel components in seawater reverse osmosis desalination plants—investigations on adapted internal cathodic protection

Stainless steel is widely used in seawater reverse osmosis units (SWRO) for both good mechanical and corrosion resistance properties. However, many corrosion failures of stainless steel in SWRO desalination units have been reported. These failures may often be attributed to un-adapted stainless stee...

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Bibliographic Details
Published in:Desalination and water treatment Vol. 55; no. 9; pp. 2478 - 2490
Main Authors: Larché, Nicolas, Dézerville, Philippe, Le Flour, Denise, Vinzio, Pascal, Köfler, Karl-Heinz, Thierry, Dominique
Format: Journal Article
Language:English
Published: Abingdon Elsevier Inc 01-08-2015
Elsevier Limited
FHF
Subjects:
Ambient temperature
Biofouling
Cathodic protection
Chemical analysis
Corrosion
Corrosion prevention
Desalination
Desalination plants
Environmental conditions
Flow rates
High flow
High temperature
Mathematical models
modeling
Oil and gas industry
osmosis
Reverse osmosis
Sciences of the Universe
Sea water
Seawater
Seawater reverse osmosis
Stainless steel
Stainless steels
steel
Steel industry
Steel products
Water analysis
Cathodic protection
Corrosion
Seawater reverse osmosis
Stainless steels
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Summary:Stainless steel is widely used in seawater reverse osmosis units (SWRO) for both good mechanical and corrosion resistance properties. However, many corrosion failures of stainless steel in SWRO desalination units have been reported. These failures may often be attributed to un-adapted stainless steel grade selection and/or to the particular aggressive seawater conditions in “warm” regions (high ambient temperature, severe biofouling, etc.). Cathodic protection (CP) is a well-known efficient system to prevent corrosion of metallic materials in seawater. It is successfully used in the oil and gas industry to protect carbon steel structures exposed in open-sea. However, the specific service conditions of SWRO units may seriously affect the efficiency of such anti-corrosion system (high flow rates, large stainless steel surfaces affected by biofouling, confinement limiting protective cathodic current flow, etc.). Hence, CP in SWRO units should be considered with special care and modeling appears as useful tool to assess an appropriate CP design. However, there is a clear lack of CP data that could be transposed to SWRO service conditions (i.e. stainless steel, effect of biofouling, high flow rate, etc.). From this background a Join Industry Program was initiated including laboratory exposures, field measurements in a full scale SWRO desalination plant, and modeling work using PROCOR software. The present paper reviews the main parameters affecting corrosion of stainless steel alloys in seawater reverse osmosis units. CP on specific stainless steel devices was investigated in order to assess its actual efficiency for SWRO units. Severe environmental conditions were intentionally used to promote corrosion on the tested stainless steel products in order to evaluate the efficiency of CP. The study includes a modeling work aiming at predicting and designing adapted CP protection to modeled stainless steel units. An excellent correlation between modeling work and field measurements was found.
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ISSN:1944-3986
1944-3994
1944-3986
DOI:10.1080/19443994.2014.939499