Joint Industry Project (JIP): Industry Best Practices for Evaluating Efficacy of Corrosion Inhibitors Used in the Oil and Gas Industry

This JIP intends to address industry gaps in the development of consensus industry standards for corrosion inhibitor performance testing. The ultimate objective of these efforts will be true consensus standards consistent with ASTM/AMPP requirements – but initial meetings held between interested stakeholders reveal that there is much consensus building work required to establish generally accepted guidelines1.

To achieve the objective three phases are envisaged.

• Phase 1: Collection of existing company practices from owners, operators, chemical suppliers, and subject matter experts (Completed).
• Phase 2: Development of guidelines representing industry best practices for corrosion inhibitor testing in twenty-three (23) standard applications established in Phase 1 (Completed).
• Phase 3: Development of Standard Test Methods for eight (8) most promising and relevant methodologies identified in Phase 2 (Ongoing).

The major benefits of the JIP are that the sponsors gain improved confidence in their laboratory testing of corrosion inhibitors from more thorough understanding of collective, consensus practices.

Overall, the JIP sponsors will improve their confidence in the following important aspects of their internal corrosion management and mitigation programs:

1. To confidently carry out corrosion inhibitor testing in their companies for the 23 applications based on the knowledge and experience of other participating sponsors as well as taking into consideration selection, application, and monitoring activities.
2. To develop, refine, or improve their company inhibitor program.
3. To use appropriate best practices to test corrosion inhibitors.
4. To effectively interact with chemical vendors and guide them to receive the best products and services.
5. To compare their best practices with industry’s best practices.
6. To enhance efficacy of corrosion inhibitors in their operation and efficiency of data collection on inhibitor performance.
7. To better understand the gap in the evaluation of efficiency and secondary properties of inhibitors and to focus their future efforts on standardization.
8. To provide technical justification on what tests need to be carried out for a given application.
9. To provide technical justification on what test results are irrelevant to a given application.
10. To provide technical justification to phase out unreliable laboratory methodologies.

The JIP will specifically bring the following benefits to chemical suppliers:

1. To influence the development of industry best practices based on their expertise and experience.
2. To effectively interact with clients and guide them to evaluate corrosion inhibitors using appropriate methodologies for their applications.
3. To provide justifications for not using certain methodologies in some applications.
4. To promote the effectiveness of their products based on industry best practices.

Specifically, the benefits of Phase 3 of the JIP include:

• Ability for industry to select appropriate chemicals in a quantitative and defendable approach.
• Ability for chemical suppliers to provide information about their products based on screening tests under standard conditions.
• Ability for end users to pre-select chemicals from several suppliers taking into consideration of the precision of the laboratory methodologies used to test the chemicals.
• Ability for end users to narrow down and select appropriate chemicals considering their operating conditions.
• Ability for both end users and chemical suppliers to reduce the number of tests to be performed.
• Ability for chemical suppliers to bring new products to the market in an accelerated process.
• Ability for end users and chemical suppliers to routine test the chemicals during application

For more information on the status of the JIP contact: spapavin@corrmagnet.com