Microbiologically Influenced Corrosion High-Risk Area Prediction Model Based on Hydrodynamics Method

Abstract

Microbiologically influenced corrosion (MIC) is a high-risk corrosion mechanism of oil refinery storage and transportation systems, and sand deposition is the necessary prerequisite for a corrosion environment under the scale. Based on a computational fluid dynamics (CFD) simulation, this paper analyzes and predicts the critical velocity of sand deposition. By comparing the field failure case data and experimental data, it is proved that there is good agreement between the data and the prediction results. The analysis also found that there is a critical angle that is prone to sand deposition in the refinery oil pipeline, and the critical velocity will jump after the critical angle. The sizes of the sand particles and the length of the inclined pipe section also influence the sand deposition rate. According to this feature, a probability model of sand deposition is established to predict the risk of microbial corrosion.