Erosion vs. Corrosion
In the oil and gas industry, we take mechanical integrity seriously. In this video, you can see the difference between corrosion and erosion of piping inside a line heater. Corrosion and erosion are both types of failure mechanisms we find in our industry and being able to properly diagnose how piping fails is crucial to preventing more failures in the future. Great work to the folks at ARC Energy for helping to produce educational videos like these so we can all be #EnergyStrong and #neverstoplearning!
Transcript:
– Good afternoon. In this video we’re gonna talk about the difference between erosion and corrosion as it applies to the indirect heater coils.
– All right, so for context, the piping that you’re seeing there on the table is that of coils from the inside of a line heater or indirect heater. Now a line heater is commonly used to warm up processed fluids. So typically that of a well stream. So you’re talking oil, gas, and water. And you’re warming ’em up so that when you take a pressure cut that it doesn’t freeze the process flow. Now we’ll likely do our own video on what a line heater is and how it works. But in general, here is a 3D view from another YouTube video in the meantime, and you can see how the vessel is filled with essentially a heating medium or sometimes referred to as a water bath.
– [Tim] So in this case, we have a coil that was built from two-inch double, extra heavy pipe. And as you could see, the one on the left is extremely corroded on the outside of the pipe. The one on the right is an example of a new fresh pipe. And as you can see, the corrosion attacked the outside of this coil pipe. That was due to not paying attention to the pH of the water bath. Over time, it corroded extremely. You can see the wall thickness is less than eight of an inch in spots, as opposed to a 0.438″ wall. Then this is an example of erosion which in this case is internal. In this case, the flow was extremely fast with some solids. And once that groove started, it was like a funnel, and funneled all of the erosive materials to the outer edge of this elbow. It actually ate clear through in spots. But that is erosion as opposed to corrosion.
– You know, it’s important to realize that the location of the damage does not necessarily signify whether it is corrosion or erosion. And for example, it’s actually not going to be uncommon or impossible to see corrosion on the inside of the coils if the process stream is particularly corrosive. Now identifying whether something is erosion or corrosion is done on a case by case basis in the location, fluid composition, operating conditions, etc.. All these things are taken into account to make that determination. A big thanks to ARC Energy for helping us bring basic energy education like this to you guys, to the public. ARC Energy designs, manufacturers, refurbishes, and even rents all different types of oil field production equipment. And with that in mind, if you, as a viewer have a topic request, please go ahead and drop that in the comments below. We’d love to see that. Thanks again for watching this video and be sure to subscribe to our channel for more videos like this and check our website for dozens of courses, including topics on corrosion as well as mitigation through chemical programs.