Corrosion protection of steel pipelines with metal-polymer composite barrier liners

https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jngse.2020.103407Get rights and content

Highlights

  • Gas permeability of CH4, CO2, and H2O measured for 5 polymer and 3 composite films.

  • Aluminum layer is effective in improve the gas barrier property of composite films.

  • Steel coupons enclosed in composite barrier films are less prone to sweet corrosion.

Abstract

Pipelines are efficient in transporting natural gas over large distances. Wet carbon dioxide present in pipelines can create an environment that is corrosive to steel. Polymer liners made from either polyethylene or polyamide (nylon) are presently used to mitigate internal corrosion in natural gas pipelines. Gas diffuses through all polymers over time, and polymer-only liners lower the steel corrosion rate by reducing the reactive gas flux to the internal surface of a pipeline. Composite liners, which incorporate one or more metallic layers that are impermeable to corrosive gases, offer better protection than polymer-only liners. We measured the methane, water vapor, and carbon dioxide permeability of a multi-layer barrier film and found it to be more effective in resisting gas permeation than polyethylene and nylon-11 films. The composite barrier film was more effective in protecting steel coupons immersed in a mixture of gaseous methane and wet carbon dioxide at 1 and 24 atm compared with polyethylene and polyamide films.

Introduction

Natural gas combined cycle (NGCC) power plants are the most efficient fossil fuel power plants in service today and offer a path towards decarbonized electricity generation when coupled with carbon capture and storage technologies (Khallaghi et al., 2020). Moreover, since natural gas power plants can be ramped quickly to meet fluctuations in solar and wind power, they play a vital role in a smart electric power grid (Jackson and Letcher, 2014). While high-pressure pipelines are the most cost-effective means of transporting natural gas across large distances (Mokhatab et al., 2018), they are costly to build and construction can be embroiled in political controversy (Schneider, 2018; Harper, 2020). In addition to supplying NGCC power plants today, existing natural gas transmission pipelines may be called upon to transport carbon dioxide and hydrogen in the future due to the cost and difficulty of building new pipelines.

Wet carbon dioxide and hydrogen are known to have deleterious effects on steel: the former can corrode steel (Onyebuchi et al., 2018) and the latter can embrittle steel (Melaina et al., 2013). One approach to mitigating potential exposure to carbon dioxide and hydrogen in a multi-product gas pipeline scenario is to use liners with gas barrier properties. Presently, polyethylene (PE) or polyamide (PA) liners are used to protect gathering pipelines from internal corrosion in upstream applications (Lebsack and Hawn, 1997; Siegmund et al., 2002); however, the diffusion of carbon dioxide and hydrogen sulfide over time saturates these polymers (Sarrasin et al., 2015) and can result in steel corrosion when water is also present (Simon et al., 2010). The gas barrier property of the polymeric liner may be improved by adding a continuous metallic foil layer that is physically impermeable to gas diffusion. Metal-polymer composite barrier films have been used for decades to mitigate oxygen and moisture diffusion in food packaging (Brody et al., 2008). These barrier films are fabricated from aluminum foil and various polymer layers (Lamberti and Escher, 2007). Aluminum provides excellent resistance to gas permeation (Marsh and Bugusu, 2007) and corrosion (Craig, 1995), while the polymer layers provide both structural support and additional chemical resistance.

Permeation of small gas molecules through polymers occurs through a solution-diffusion mechanism, whereby the gas first dissolves in the polymer, diffuses through the membrane, and then desorbs from the polymer (Tremblay et al., 2006). The permeation coefficient is the product of the solubility and diffusion coefficients for any gas-polymer system (Robeson, 1991). The chemical properties of a polymer and its physical microstructure are important variables in determining the solubility and diffusion coefficients of gases in that polymer (Flaconneche et al., 2001a). Gas permeation through polymer membranes has been measured using a variety of methods, including: change in system mass (Payne and Gardner, 1937), change in gas pressure (Heilman et al., 1956; O'Brien et al., 1986; Del Nobile et al., 1995), or by the change in target gas concentration in a carrier gas through cavity ring-down infrared spectroscopy (Brewer et al., 2012), mass spectrometry (Flaconneche et al., 2001b), or thermal conductivity detection (Al-Ati et al., 2003).

We measured the permeation of methane, water vapor, and carbon dioxide through five commercial polymers and three aluminum-polymer composite barrier films. Protection against sweet corrosion (by carbon dioxide and water vapor) was evaluated for polyethylene (low-density and high-density), polyamide (nylon-11), and multi-layer foil composite barrier films under ambient conditions and pressurized methane to simulate transmission pipeline conditions. The multi-layer foil composite barrier film was found to have the lowest gas permeability and the lowest carbonic acid corrosion rate for both ambient and pressurized methane tests.

Section snippets

Polymer and composite film sample characterization

We tested low-density polyethylene (LDPE), high-density polyethylene (HDPE), nylon-11, fluorinated ethylene propylene (FEP), polyvinyl fluoride (PVF), multi-layer foil composite (MLFC), metallized oriented polypropylene (MOPP), and metallized polyethylene terephthalate (MPET). All samples were from commercial vendors and were tested as-received.

A Fourier transform infrared spectrometer (Nicolet iS10) with attenuated total reflectance (ATR) diamond sampling cell was used to analyze all polymers

Polymer and composite material characterization

The thermal analysis of the as-received polymer films and the post-exposure films were analyzed via DSC. The thermogram (Fig. 3) shows the results of the heating and cooling cycle on the low-density polyethylene. The glass transition for low-density polyethylene appears at temperatures below what were achievable with the instrumentation. The melting and crystallization peaks appear where expected.

Comparing the first heating cycle for the exposed films and the second heating cycle for the

Conclusion

This research demonstrated lower gas permeability through commercial composite films compared with polyethylene and nylon-11. Consistent with the lower measured gas permeability, the composite film is more effective at blocking the diffusion of water and carbon dioxide, which react to form carbonic acid. The composite film is more effective in protecting steel coupons from a wet carbon dioxide corrosive environment at both ambient and elevated pressures. The increased permeation resistance can

CRediT authorship contribution statement

Matthew M. Ali: Investigation, Writing - original draft, Visualization. Julia C. Magee: Investigation, Resources, Writing - review & editing. Peter Y. Hsieh: Conceptualization, Methodology, Investigation, Resources, Writing - review & editing, Supervision.

Declaration of competing interest

The authors declare that they have no known competing financial interests or personal relationships that could have appeared to influence the work reported in this paper.

Acknowledgements

This technical effort was performed in support of the National Energy Technology Laboratory's Natural Gas Infrastructure Methane Emissions Mitigation Program. The authors thank Mr. Trevor Godell for machining the steel coupons used in this study, Mr. Jeffrey Oberfoell for laboratory support, as well as Dr. Margaret Ziomek-Moroz for helpful comments on the manuscript. FTIR-ATR measurements were made at Oregon State University. DSC measurements were made at the Center for Advanced Materials

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    Present address: School for Environment and Sustainability, University of Michigan, 440 Church St. Ann Arbor, MI 48109, USA.

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