Title:
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Investigations of aqueous erosion-corrosion using rotating cylinder electrodes
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The use of rotating cylinder electrodes for the investigation of aqueous erosion-corrosion
has determined that they are suited to the task with some minor modifications. The
requirements that need to be met to ensure that true turbulence is produced within a cell to
allow reproducible investigation of a range of erosion corrosion parameters have been
elucidated. The cell must operate above Taylor numbers of 15000 and as such large
annular gaps and higher temperatures are beneficial. Careful consideration of the
conditions required needs to be made before designing a rotating cylinder for the study of
erosion corrosion.
The use of outer cylinder static electrodes has been determined, through mass transfer
tests to be valid for a small annular gap of 5mm, allowing experiments to be set up in
autoclaves that reproduce hostile process plant parameters.
Fixed potential studies of the erosion corrosion of mild and chromium steel in deaerated
1M NaOH have determined that over the majority of the potential range studied there was
no synergistic effect between corrosion and erosion. The erosion-corrosion rate was just
the sum of the corrosion rate during erosion and the erosion rate in the absence of
corrosion. Over a small potential range in the transpassive corrosion region of the
chromium steel a negative synergistic effect was determined. In this region, the
transpassive corrosion of chromium from the steel inhibits the erosion of the metal by
impacting particles.
The effect of particle size on total erosion-corrosion, and its separate erosion and
corrosion components has revealed that for the same addition of particles by weight, the
corrosion rate under erosion is independent of the particle size. However, the erosion
produced is heavily dependent on the particle size, being approximately constant for large
sizes and decreasing rapidly below 100jm. These findings have been corroborated by
microscopy of the sample surfaces.
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