Atomistic Modeling of Corrosion Accelerants in the Petroleum Industry
EMSL Project ID
37502
Abstract
Materials selection is critical to petroleum refining operations, due to the frequently aggressive chemical, flow and thermal conditions encountered by structural components such as pipelines and condenser units. Chlorides, which cause pitting, sulfides, which cause uniform corrosion, and cyanides, which complex with iron, are commonly found in process stream wastewater, and their combination, along with other species, frequently confounds the process of materials selection. Chemical modification of process streams, such as addition of ammonium polysulfide, can help lower corrosion rates. However, the fundamental mechanisms of many of these corrosion processes remain unknown, thus limiting the determination of rational design principles. We propose to utilize the high performance computing resources (150,000 cpu hours) provided by the Chinook cluster at PNNL to calculate fundamental surface adsorption energies relevant to corrosion in the petroleum industry, particularly focusing upon the problem of the acceleration of sulfide corrosion of mild-steels by small quantities of cyanide.
Project Details
Project type
Exploratory Research
Start Date
2009-11-17
End Date
2010-11-21
Status
Closed
Released Data Link
Team
Principal Investigator