Abstract
The pipelines and vast infrastructure required for the production and transport of oil and gas are largely constructed of carbon steel. This material is highly susceptible to damage and failure as a result of direct or indirect Microbially Influenced Corrosion (MIC). One approach to reduce and/or remediate MIC is the application of microbicides to affected assets such as storage tanks, pipelines, heat exchangers and pumps. The objective of this paper is to generate efficacy data for biocidal formulations against corrosion-associated biofilms grown under anoxic and flowing conditions, which is difficult to obtain due to the distinct nature of biofilms and growth conditions. This data can be more representative when mimicking petroleum and water transporting pipelines. Thus, to facilitate the testing and comparison of products that successfully attenuate MIC under field-relevant conditions, a method that allows consistent corrosion measurements to be made, for corroding biofilms grown on steel surfaces under flowing and anoxic conditions, has been developed. This method utilizes microorganisms that were enriched on carbon steel from a North Sea sediment sample that, when grown in recirculating flow circuits, can generate corrosion rates of up to 65 mpy after four weeks of growth. The samples taken for the enrichment of corroding cultures came from a low tide anoxic sediment sample (black sand). In this presentation and paper, this method and its application to the benchmarking of field-relevant biocidal chemistries in MIC control experiments are described. Attention will be given to the reproducibility of the method as well. Distinct differences can be observed in biocidal performance against biofilms developed on metal surfaces.
