Abstract
Over the past 25 years the Corrosion Engineering Section of the Development and Research Department of the author’s company has co-operated with the petroleum industry in analyzing corrosion problems encountered in refineries and in running spool tests to determine the most suitable and economical materials that might be used in specific applications. It is the purpose of this paper to present 15 actual corrosion problems that have been submitted for consideration and to show the steps taken to analyze them in the light of our practical experience and available test data obtained under the same or similar conditions. In some cases, where the problems were not readily solvable, based on available information, it was necessary to resort to the installation of spool-type specimen holders in the operating equipment to determine the relative suitability of various metals and alloys under actual service conditions. From the nature of the problems, it is indicated that Type 502 stainless steel is a highly acceptable and reasonably economical material as a replacement for mild steel except in instances where mineral acids or chlorides may be present as well as highly alkaline solutions at elevated temperatures. Under the latter conditions, the trend is toward the use of more highly alloyed materials such as Monel and nickel together with the copper-base alloys like 70-30 cupronickel, Admiralty metal, and Muntz metal.
