2 SPE-170951-MS

Introduction
In the oil and gas industry, erosion/corrosion jeopardizes integrity of the flowlines and functionality of the
production manifolds, process headers and other components. So, production and transportation facilities
are designed so that the flow velocity is below the erosional velocity, presumably a flow velocity at which
it is safe to operate but beyond that erosion damage may occur. This threshold velocity depends on many
factors such as fluid properties, operating condition, entrained particles and geometry type and size, and
its prediction is important from both economical and safety aspects.
Erosion is the physical removal of material by solid particles or liquid droplets, and corrosion is another
form of material degradation that occurs through chemical reaction. Depending on the production
condition, solid particles, which are mainly sand and highly erosive, may be present in the flow, but in
clean service or corrosive flow, liquid droplets are a source of concern especially in high velocity gas
streams. Furthermore, the liquid droplets that are entrained in the produced gas from the reservoir may be
corrosive or contain very small particles that are hardly separable by physical means. In this paper a
guideline is presented to estimate the erosional velocity in production and transportation facilities and
their components due to the impingement of liquid droplets with or without tiny particles entrained.
A comprehensive approach to erosion modeling consists of flow modeling, particle tracking and
erosion equations. Experimental data are used to develop a new erosion ratio equation for liquid droplets.
Multiphase flow equations and models are implemented to determine impact condition of droplets and
particles to be substituted in the erosion equations to predict erosion ratio. In this paper, a calculation
methodology is presented to calculate threshold erosional velocity or penetration rate due to liquid droplet
impingement with or without small particles at very low concentration.
Background
American Petroleum Institute Recommended Practice 14E (API RP 14E) [1] proposed a correlation for
erosional velocity, Ve (in ft/s) for gas-liquid mixtures as follows,
(1)

where c is an empirical constant and ␳m is the gas/liquid mixture density in lb/ft3. In this equation c ⫽
100 for continuous service and c ⫽ 125 for intermittent service for solid-free fluids and when corrosion
is not anticipated, the constant could rise to c ⫽ 250. Some authors believe that the basis for API RP 14E
may be due to liquid impact erosion [2]. However, there is no experimental or theoretical evidence
supporting this idea. The erosional velocity calculated from this equation seems to be very conservative
as compared to the experimental data from literature [3,4].
Sand erosion has been studied extensively in the literature. Shirazi, et al. [5] and McLaury, et al. [6]
presented a mechanistic model to predict erosion in elbows and tees in single and multiphase flows using
a stagnation length concept. Salama and Venkatesh [2] proposed an equation for sand erosion and
concluded that erosional velocity due to liquid droplet impingement in clean service is as high as values
corresponding to c ⫽ 300 in the API RP 14E correlation, and this velocity limitation is not allowed
because of severe pressure drop in the pipe. Svedeman [7] concluded that flow velocity does not require
being limited in sand-free and corrosion-free service. Castle, et al. [8] reported operational velocity up to
three times the calculated value from the API formula (3⫻API) for various materials. Some authors
developed analytical or empirical formulae to predict erosion due to liquid impact [9, 10]. These formulae
are applicable to a certain range of flow conditions especially for extremely high velocity gas streams
which are rarely achievable in the petroleum industry.
A calculation procedure was proposed for erosion due to liquid droplet impingement by the present
authors earlier [11] in which experimental studies and corresponding results in the literature were analyzed
and the original erosion ratio equation available in American Society of Testing and Materials (ASTM)
SPE-170951-MS 3

standard G73-10 [12] is used to predict erosion of Table 1—Normalized Erosion Resistance (NER) for Several Oilfield
Materials
different materials as a result of liquid droplet im-
Designation Normalized Erosion Resistance (NER)
pact. Comparison of predicted erosion values to
experimental data in the literature revealed that this SS-316 1.00
erosion equation is more appropriate to be used for 9Cr-1M 0.25
1018 0.15
large droplets (⬎ 1 mm in diameter) at high impact
13Cr-a 0.90
velocities, and it over-predicts erosion ratio for 13Cr-h 0.64
small droplets at low impact velocities (⬍ 200 m/s). Sm25-Cr 3.43
Also, it was found that even by using this conser- 2205 1.83
vative erosion equation, predicted erosional veloci- 625 5.19
Sm825 0.96
ties from API RP 14E correlation are mostly more
conservative than what is predicted by the mecha-
nistic approach and do not follow the trend when
operating pressure increased from ambient pressure up to thousands of psi. The present work improves the
earlier work and presents a comprehensive guideline to calculate erosion by liquid impact by introducing
a new erosion equation for liquid impact, considering the effect of impurities in the liquid and estimation
of entrainment fraction, droplet size and droplet/particle impact velocity from multiphase flow models and
stagnation zone concept [5,6].

Model Description
Liquid Droplet Impingement Erosion
In this paper, erosion calculations are studied under two conditions, droplets without and with entrained
particles. For the first case, a calculation methodology has been presented previously [11]. According to
ASTM standard G73-10 [12], erosion ratio is defined as the ratio of volume loss of the target material to
the volume of impinged liquid, and it is calculated from the following empirical correlation,
(2)

where V is the impact velocity, NER is Normalized Erosion Resistance obtained from experiments, d
is diameter of the jet or droplet, J is 1 for jet and 0 for droplet impact and K accounts for curvature of the
surface and is 1 when the surface is curved and 0 when it is flat. The NER parameter shows resistivity of
the materials against liquid impingement erosion based on the measured average mass loss
(3)

where Qex is maximum erosion ratio for test material x, Qei is maximum erosion ratio for reference
material i and Seri is the reference erosion resistance for reference material i. It is calculated from liquid
jet impingement tests at the Erosion/Corrosion Research Center (E/CRC) [11] by comparing the mass loss
of each material to the reference material which is SS-316 with erosion resistance number of 1. This
technique will normalize the erosion resistance of a specific material with respect to a well-known
material and eliminate some of the effects of the experimental method. The normalized erosion resistances
of several materials that were tested during this work are determined from average values of erosion ratio
determined experimentally and are summarized in Table 1. It is observed from the table that erosion
resistance of Inconel 625 to liquid impact is 5 times greater than the reference material, but the erosion
resistance of 1018 to liquid impact erosion-corrosion is about 7 times less than SS-316.
In order to assess the erosion ratio correlation, some experimental values of erosion ratio (obtained in
a paddle wheel type device) for carbon steel from ASTM STP 474 [13] [14] are compared to correlation