Sulphide stress cracking of 17-4 PH for applications in oilfield components

ABSTRACT

The precipitation-hardening stainless steel 17-4 PH is widely used for oilfield components (tubing hangers and valve stems) due to its favourable combination of high strength and corrosion resistance. In oil and gas production systems containing hydrogen sulphide (H₂S), however, this material is highly susceptible to sulphide stress cracking (SSC). Numerous investigations conducted in the past decades outlined its corrosion performance and confirmed its cracking propensity. These studies indicated failures by SSC at low stress levels and highlighted the effects of the main environmental variables: partial pressure of H₂S, environment pH, temperature and chloride content. This review describes a series of surface modification techniques, particularly the low-temperature plasma nitriding, which can potentially be used to prevent SSC.

This review was submitted as part of the 2017 Materials Literature Review Prize of the Institute of Materials, Minerals and Mining run by the Editorial Board of MST. Sponsorship of the prize by TWI Ltd is gratefully acknowledged

KEYWORDS:

• Sulphide stress cracking
• hydrogen sulphide
• precipitation hardening
• high-strength stainless steels
• 17-4 PH
• UNS S17400
• plasma nitriding
• ISO 15156
• MR0175

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Corrigendum

Acknowledgements

I would like to express my gratitude to my supervisors Dr Xiao-Ying Li and my co-supervisors Professor Hanshan Dong and Dr Brian Connolly for the encouragement to write this review. I extend my appreciation to Mr Phil Dent for the technical discussions. I also would like to acknowledge the scholarship scheme provided by the Brazilian research supporting agency CAPES and the University of Birmingham.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

ORCID

Mario Sergio Della Roverys Coseglio http://orcid.org/0000-0002-5016-2855

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by Coordenação de Aperfeiçoamento de Pessoal de Nível Superior: [Grant Number 3578-14-3]; University of Birmingham: [Grant Number University of Birmingham – CAPES Brazil Scholarship].