Mechanism of High Temperature Corrosion by Model Naphthenic Acids

摘要

Naphthenic acid (NAP) corrosion is one of the major concerns for corrosion engineers in refineries, particularly with the increasing acidity in "opportunity crudes". However, complex compositions of NAP in crude oil make it difficult to evaluate accurately their corrosive behavior. In the present study, several model acids, including 4-phenylbutyric acid, 1-naphthoic acid, and 4-cyclohexyl pentanoic acid, have been tested in lab scale experiments previous applied to real crude fractions. Pretreatment/challenge protocol tests the corrosive behavior of the model acids under temperature and velocity ranges close to those encountered in refineries. This work demonstrates that the pretreatment of carbon steel and 9Cr-alloy with model acids yields iron oxide scales with different morphology and chemical composition as determined by Scanning Electron Microscopy (SEM) and Transmission Electron Microscopy (TEM). It is postulated that the formation of the iron oxide scale resulted from the decomposition of iron naphthenate on the surface at high temperatures.