Corrosion monitoring of low carbon steel in the system with 3% NaCl turbulence: an electrochemical investigation

ABSTRACT

In pipelines that operate in turbulent conditions, the corrosive process is accelerated and directly responsible for numerous losses in industrial plants, such as downtime in production lines, equipment failures and high maintenance costs. Although there are few laboratory studies in this flow condition, there is a consensus among countless researchers that monitoring and investigations in this condition are essential, since they simulate conditions representative of industrial reality. This work investigated the influence of the flow of the electrolytic medium on the electrochemical parameters of ABNT 1020 steel in 3% NaCl solution submitted to different speeds (0.21, 0.42, 0.62 and 0.84 ms^-1), relating the results obtained by Electrochemical Impedance Spectroscopy (EIE) and Linear Potentiodynamic Polarization (LPP). The electrochemical tests were performed from an experimental platform built for this purpose and coupled to the connections of the potentiostat, in order to obtain experimental curves while the electrolyte flowed inside the cell and interacted with the metal surface. The results showed that the variation in speed causes notable changes in the main parameters of the test and that the electrochemical techniques corroborated each other in turbulent flow conditions in the test platform.

Keywords
Corrosion; Carbon steel; Turbulent flow; Electrochemistry