Flow enhanced corrosion of water injection pipelines

•A water injection line suffers internal corrosion and grooving at the 6 O’clock position.•Failure of injection line took place following flow enhanced corrosion mechanism.•Structure of uniform distributed ferrite and small volume pearlite better resists FEC.•Components suffer flow enhanced corrosion usually fail in a catastrophic manner.

A pipe spool from the subsea water injection piping network for oil operations at Eastern Desert was retrieved and internal corrosion and grooving were observed at the 6 O’clock position, in one section of the pipe, and not in the other. Two cuts from the sited piping were received for analysis to establish an overview of whether the failure is related to materials aspects or operating conditions. Results of visual inspection, chemical analysis, metallographic examination, SEM/EDX analysis, and mechanical testing showed that the corrosion resistance against flow for the quenched and tempered structure of the first cut was better than that of the cold rolled structure of the second cut. This is largely due to the uniform distributed polygonal ferrite and the small volume fraction of pearlite. Continuous removal of the loose adhered scales by electrochemical dissolution and mass transfer resulted in creation of fresh surfaces for further corrosive attack. This reduced the pipe wall below the critical thickness required to support the operating pressure and resulted in ductile failure of the pipe. Such mechanism of failure is known as the flow enhanced corrosion (FEC) mechanism. Failure in such mechanism is a catastrophic one that usually results in serious damage and injuries if not detected before undergoing.