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A highly-corrosive sulfate reducing bacterium as a model microbe to improve MIC investigations

MIC is a major problem in many industrial sectors, especially in the oil and gas industry. It is widely believed that almost 20% of all corrosion costs can be attributed to MIC. The shale gas and oil industry suffers from mostly MIC rather conventional abiotic CO2/H2S corrosion. Very severe MIC with fast failures are seen in field operations with very harsh operating conditions such as high salinity and nutrient-rich water, including treated municipal wastewater that promotes microbial growth. In some situations, titanium and plastic pipes are used to cope with MIC.

Product Number: 51323-18912-SG
Author: Lingjun Xu, Sith Kumseranee, Suchada Punpruk, Pruch Kijkla, Adnan Khan, Tingyue Gu
Publication Date: 2023
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For a long time, there was a 101 gap in corrosion rates between MIC (microbiologically influenced corrosion) lab tests and fast field cases. However, this gap is effectively closed when using Desulfovibrio ferrophilus (IS5 strain), as sulfate-reducing bacterium (SRB) for MIC testing. Using D. ferrophilus, weight loss as high as 36.6 mg/cm2 for one week (equivalent to uniform corrosion rate of 2.0 mm/year) on a carbon steel and pitting rate of 1.9 cm/year on 420 stainless steel, which is widely used against CO2 corrosion in pipelines, have been observed with negligible abiotic corrosion contribution. This SRB also has a much larger sessile cell count than Desulfovibrio vulgaris, a popular SRB strain widely tested in MIC studies. The highly-corrosive D. ferrophilus provides more reliable weight loss far above experimental error in short-term lab tests. This makes some previously unreliable studies feasible, including MIC variations for different pipeline clock positions and, MIC variations for different roughness values. This work provides some examples of lab testing using this SRB in lab tests. The experimental data in this work demonstrates that D. ferrophilus provided sufficient corrosion parameter differences to study pipeline clock position impact and corrosion surface roughness impact on SRB MIC of carbon steel.

For a long time, there was a 101 gap in corrosion rates between MIC (microbiologically influenced corrosion) lab tests and fast field cases. However, this gap is effectively closed when using Desulfovibrio ferrophilus (IS5 strain), as sulfate-reducing bacterium (SRB) for MIC testing. Using D. ferrophilus, weight loss as high as 36.6 mg/cm2 for one week (equivalent to uniform corrosion rate of 2.0 mm/year) on a carbon steel and pitting rate of 1.9 cm/year on 420 stainless steel, which is widely used against CO2 corrosion in pipelines, have been observed with negligible abiotic corrosion contribution. This SRB also has a much larger sessile cell count than Desulfovibrio vulgaris, a popular SRB strain widely tested in MIC studies. The highly-corrosive D. ferrophilus provides more reliable weight loss far above experimental error in short-term lab tests. This makes some previously unreliable studies feasible, including MIC variations for different pipeline clock positions and, MIC variations for different roughness values. This work provides some examples of lab testing using this SRB in lab tests. The experimental data in this work demonstrates that D. ferrophilus provided sufficient corrosion parameter differences to study pipeline clock position impact and corrosion surface roughness impact on SRB MIC of carbon steel.