Back of These Data Is That General Fouling Is Measured: Total Sum of Inorganic and Organic Deposits
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Corrosion Problems and their Solutions in the Oil Refining Industry. Alec Groysman Oil Refineries Ltd., POBox 4, Haifa,31000, Israel E-mail: [email protected] Phone: 972-4-8788623; Fax: 972-4-8788371 Abstract. Many corrosion problems have occurred with related ecological damage, during the 90 years of the existence of the oil refining industry. Many corrosion problems have been solved. Some of them have not. Why? Sometimes corrosion damages occur at certain facilities, but nor at others. There are many corrosion experts, institutes and laboratories, corrosion magazines, books, standards, and conferences, etc. A lot of companies manufacture different materials and equipment for corrosion control. In spite of this, corrosion problems remain the main danger to the oil refining industry and to ecology. The aim of this work is to survey the corrosion situation at Oil Refineries LTD. Israel, during the past three years, in order to estimate cost of corrosion; to define the reasons for corrosion problems and to find effective measures to solve them, and, as a result, to improve reliability, availability and profitability at the refinery facilities. Every industry, even every plant, has its own distribution of corrosion phenomena that occur with different frequency. Even this distribution changes every year. The present corrosion survey gives estimation of direct corrosion loss at the facilities at Oil Refineries. Real examples of distribution of corrosion damages that occurred during the last three years as well as the solutions of their prevention in the future are given. Corrosion cases are classified according to corrosion forms. The distribution of corrosion forms changes every year. About 75% of all corrosion failures happened because of insufficient information and knowledge, as well as inadequate interaction among different groups responsible for the acceptance and approval of anti-corrosion decisions. The human factor was the main reason of corrosion failures. Corrosion management must be designed in such a manner that will increase human potential in performance of correct decisions. Examples of wrong use of corrosion control measures, such as corrosion inhibitors` type and their concentrations, alloys, coats, and technological regimes are given. Insufficient, or sometimes lack of use of corrosion monitoring methods result in a non-controlling corrosion situation. Indirect cost of corrosion is connected with the ecological impact on the environment, loss of expensive chemicals, a contamination of technological streams by corrosion products, loss of efficiency, overdesign and shutdowns. The corrosion risk is connected with environmental pollution by hazardous chemicals, fuels, and gases, resulting in possible fires and explosions, damage to people, animals, plants, air, soil and water. The causes of corrosion damage of aboveground storage tanks, pipes, heat exchangers, and other equipment, as well as preventative measures are analyzed. Most of the corrosion cost can be saved by means of correct use of existent corrosion control measures, dissemination of information and knowledge, and wide use of corrosion monitoring techniques. A model of interconnections of all groups at the Oil Refineries with the aim to diminish corrosion risk was suggested. Keywords: corrosion problems, control, monitoring, anti-corrosion management. 1 Introduction. The Oil Refining industry exists for about 90 years. All types of corrosion phenomena known to corrosion experts, plus some specific problems (such as naphthenic acid corrosion), were found at the Units of the Oil Refineries. Many corrosion problems have been solved [1]. Some of them have not. Why? Sometimes corrosion damages occur at certain facilities, but not at others. There are many corrosion experts, institutes and laboratories, corrosion magazines, books, standards, and conferences, such as ours, etc. A lot of companies manufacture different materials and equipment for corrosion control. In spite of this, corrosion problems remain the main danger to the oil refining industry and to ecology. The aim of this work is to survey the corrosion situation at two Oil Refineries in Israel, during the past three years, in order to estimate the cost of corrosion; to define the reasons for corrosion problems and to find effective measures to solve them, and, as a result, to improve reliability, availability and profitability at the refinery facilities. Analysis of corrosion cases. Corrosion cases registered during the last three years showed that they occurred about once a week (Table 1). Table 1. Corrosion cases in the Oil Refineries in 2001 – 2003. Year Number of Cases 2001 52 2002 41 2003 46 How do we define a corrosion case? It is any failure that occurred because one of the following corrosion phenomena: general corrosion, pitting, crevice, galvanic, under deposit corrosion, intergranular, SCC (stress corrosion cracking), MIC (microbiologically induced corrosion), dezincification, erosion-corrosion, cavitation, caustic embrittlement, corrosion fatigue, stray current corrosion, overheating, corrosion under thermal insulation, and dew point corrosion. Failure of one of the corrosion control measures such as incorrect use of protective coatings or corrosion inhibitors, is also considered corrosion case. Estimation of the direct corrosion cost gave the value of about 1 million dollars per year. We analyzed the reasons in every corrosion case (Table 2). Table 2. Human factor in corrosion failures in 2001 - 2003. Factor 2001 20022003 Number of cases 52 41 46 Human factor (general) 44 30 33 Lack of awareness and knowledge 13 2 15 Lack of control and supervision 10 14 8 Unwillingness to improve 13 8 6 Incorrect operation 4 2 3 Incorrect design 4 3 1 Human error 1 Un-known 2 2 2 About 75% of all corrosion failures happened because of insufficient information and knowledge. So, the human factor was the main reason for corrosion failures. The human factor was divided into the lack of awareness and knowledge, insufficient control and supervision, unwillingness to improve the situation, wrong operation and design. Corrosion management must be designed in such a manner that it will increase the human potential in performance of correct decisions. Every industry, every plant, has its own distribution of corrosion phenomena that occur with different frequency. This distribution changes every year at one enterprise. We classified real corrosion cases occurring during the last three years according to corrosion forms (Table 3). Table 3. Different types of corrosion in the Oil Refineries. 2001 2002 2003 Type of Corrosion Number % Number % Number % General Corrosion 4 7.7 14 34.1 14 30.4 Pitting Corrosion 13 25 10 24.4 6 13.0 Erosion - Cavitation 3 5.8 5 12.2 5 10.9 Failure of Coatings and Polymers 4 7.7 3 7.3 5 10.9 Stress Corrosion Cracking 4 7.7 0 0 4 8.7 Plugging (Formation of Deposits) 0 0 0 0 4 8.7 Un-known Failures 7 13.5 2 4.9 2 4.3 Dezincification 0 0 0 0 2 4.3 Caustic Embrittlement 1 1.9 0 0 1 2.2 Under Deposit Corrosion 2 3.8 1 2.4 1 2.2 Dew Point Corrosion 2 3.8 0 0 1 2.2 Microbiologically Induced Corrosion 2 3.8 0 0 1 2.2 Mechanical Failures 3 5.8 1 2.4 0 0 Galvanic Corrosion 1 1.9 2 4.9 0 0 Corrosion because of Water Stagnation 0 0 2 4.9 0 0 Over - Heating Corrosion 0 0 1 2.4 0 0 Corrosion Fatigue 3 5.8 0 0 0 0 Stray Current Corrosion 2 3.8 0 0 0 0 Chemical Cleaning Corrosion 1 1.9 0 0 0 0 Total 52 100 41 100 46 100 The distribution of corrosion forms changes every year. The first three forms of corrosion failures, namely, general corrosion, pitting, and erosion – cavitation constitute about 60% of the 50 cases reported. We can emphasize that the frequency of general corrosion (30%) and pitting (13 to 25%) is indicative of most industries in general (for example, the chemical industry [2]) and is not limited to the Oil Refining industry alone. I have to mention the failures of coatings and polymers (about 11% of cases) and stress corrosion cracking (8%). Many structures at the Oil Refineries are coated, and polymers are used in the aboveground storage tanks with different media: petroleum distillates, aromatic solvents and oxygenates (MTBE –Methyl-Tert-Butyl-Ether). There is no ideal polymer which is resistant to all media. Stress corrosion cracking relates to the usage of austenitic stainless steels as a material of construction for many highly corrosive applications in the Oil Refining industry [3]. 3 Examples of corrosion failures. Here are several examples of correct and incorrect use of corrosion control measures, such as use of alloys, coating systems, and technological regime. 1. General corrosion of the bed for the catalyst and pipe in the stripper column at the Continuous Catalytic Reforming Unit (Figire 1). Figure 1. The carbon steel bed for the catalyst and pipe in the stripper column at the Continuous Catalytic Reforming Unit The medium was the 1% aqueous soda solution containing 1000 ppm of chlorides and 6 ppm of iron. Severe corrosion of carbon steel internals occurred after 8 years of operation. Laboratory examination of corrosiveness of this medium showed corrosion rate of 1 mm/year for carbon steel. It was found that some kinds of Duplex steels, high molybdenum stainless steel and Monel, were resistant to the corrosive medium in the stripper. The human factor was responsible in this case, because carbon steel was wrongly chosen as the material of construction at the project stage. 2. General corrosion and incorrect use of material – corrosion of heat exchanger tubes made of carbon steel after 8 years of operation (Figure 2). Figure 2. Heat exchanger tubes. Inside of tubes – FeS. Inside of the tubes there was crude oil, outside – vacuum bottom. The temperature varied from 280 to 320oC. Sulfur content in crude oil varied from 4.3 to 5.6%.