High temperature sulfidation of carbon steel heater tubes in gas condensate containing sulfur compounds

Being inexpensive and readily available, carbon steel is considered as the material of choice for majority of applications in the petroleum refining industry. However, carbon steel is unsuitable for applications involving certain corrosive species such as sulfur compounds. In this work the causes of heater tubes rupture in BPC have been investigated. Our results indicate that the major cause for premature failure is high temperature sulfidation along with erosion due to turbulence. This study shows that the corrosion rate of the tubes does not follow McConomy law and it is much higher than the one predicted by McConomy curves. As a result, carbon steel is not a suitable material for such heater tubes, where the gas condensate contains high amount of sulfur compounds especially mercaptans.