Corrosion and erosion tests

In the oil and gas industry, corrosion and erosion in equipment is a rather significant factor affecting the durability of the lower completion equipment. It is important to understand that the effect of corrosion and erosion depends on the quality of the materials used. It should also be borne in mind that there are equipment units that experience an increased impact of these factors when assessing their durability.

These assembly units include, first of all, valves for controlling the inflow and injection of fluid. Therefore, customers of oil and gas equipment for lower finishing have special requirements for the quality of materials and wear resistance of certain equipment components. As part of laboratory research, corrosion and erosion tests are carried out according to customer requirements

Special equipment is used for testing, which allows creating the effect of erosion on the most vulnerable, from the point of view of this impact, equipment components. This equipment allows simulating accelerated erosive wear by a stream of air sandblasting.

To carry out this test, a sample of the material from which the tested unit is made is taken and placed in a special chamber at the target site to bombard this sample with a stream of sandblasting. In the course of the experiment, the comparative resistance of the material to this effect is checked. A specially constructed mathematical model of the ongoing erosion processes allows to assess the durability of this product. This method was used to test ICD and AIV ceramic valves for erosion

Installation scheme for testing erosive wear

Corrosion testing is a fairly common type of test performed on equipment in the oil and gas industry. A feature of these tests is the application of well-known testing techniques to the most vulnerable unites of the equipment used for the lower completion. The occurrence of corrosion is especially closely studied in the joints of welded units, valves in inflows and injection of fluid into an oil well. In the standard, the assembly unit to be subjected to the corrosion test is placed in a special container for testing. In this container, an aggressive effect of a chemically active environment on the test sample is made. The fast course of corrosion processes makes it possible to estimate the corrosion rate of the selected unit, as well as to calculate the lifetime of the specified product in the working environment of the lower completion.

The test is carried out using the placement of the filter filtering surface in a concentrated solution of sulphuric acid (H2SO4, 96%) at a temperature (50 - 100 C). The rate of dissolution or decrease in the mass of the filtering surface is recorded.