Unveiling Corrosion Behavior of Pipeline Steels in CO2-Containing Oilfield Produced Water: Towards Combating the Corrosion Curse

The presence of carbon dioxide (CO2) in oilfield produced water, which could be natural or intentionally injected component in oil and gas production, is extremely corrosive to pipelines and tubings. Oilfield produced water is mainly brine solution comprising organic acids, purely condensed water as well as aggressive ions like SO42−, Cl− and dissolved acid gases (like CO2). CO2 induced corrosion in this media is more detrimental than corrosion induced by HCl. This study critically unveiled the CO2 corrosion behavior of steel in oilfield produced water. The subjects covered include the chemistry of CO2 in water, supercritical CO2 condition, computational fluid dynamics (CFD) and corrosion control. Corrosion resistant alloy has been proved to exhibit remarkable corrosion resistance due to formation of strong protective film that can prevent localized corrosion. Moreover, the use of viable surface-active compounds, which are constituents of crude oil is a promising strategy for pipeline steel corrosion mitigation.