CORROSION OF 316L STAINLESS STEEL TUBESOF HIGH PRESSURE HEAT EXCHANGER

Abstract

The study aims to estimate causes for 316L stainless steel tubes failure in chloride contaminated environment. All the conditions were established and studied like temperature difference, thermal stresses, oxygen content and chloride concentration. All the observations on the performed tests suggest that chloride does not affect 316L stainless steel cracking deeply, but there was a conjugate effect appeared when thermal stresses exists.Uniform corrosion was observed in the case of oxygen film absences. Visual and microscopic inspections have been used to observe the effect of chloride and oxygen concentration on corrosion form.

Keywords

• Stress corrosion
• stainless steel
• thermal cracking
• chlorides