Influence of Calcium Scaling on Corrosion Behavior of Steel and Aluminum Alloys

Abstract

Calcium scaling is a serious problem encountered in the oil and gas industry because it is common that brines produced alongside oil and gas exhibit high concentrations of calcium ions, among others, which is expensive to remedy. The precipitation of calcium salts on the internal wall of the pipelines may occur because of the physical and chemical changes as fluids are produced from downhole to surface facilities. Although different researchers have address scaling and corrosion in the oil and gas industry, there are few reports in the literature relating the corrosion and scaling phenomena simultaneously. Despite there being indications that scales may produce corrosion problems, affecting the mechanical integrity of the infrastructure, there is minimal research in the literature addressing such relations. Previous studies presented aluminum alloys as excellent and reliable materials for applications in the petroleum industry, such as drilling activities. In this work, we evaluate the corrosion behavior of steel and aluminum alloys under highly scaling environments using supersaturated brines. Our results show that the presence of calcium carbonate and calcium sulfate as a scaling environment increases the corrosion rates for aluminum alloys and carbon steel; however, the same environments do not affect the corrosion behavior of stainless steel.