Environmental conditions affect the corrosion product composition of methanogen induced microbiologically influenced corrosion (MI-MIC)

Corrosion is a very expensive and serious problem in the different industry sectors, eg. Petroleum, On- and off-shore, infrastructure. It is estimated that 20% of all corrosion damage is caused by microorganisms or microbiologically influenced corrosion (MIC). Several microorganisms are known to cause corrosion, including sulfate-reducing bacteria, nitrate-reducing bacteria, methanogens etc. For several years, methanogens were regarded as a mild corroder (~0.065 mm/yr), largely due to a lack of detailed investigation on the corrosion mechanism under realenvironment simulated conditions. Resulting in the common belief that siderite, a non-conductive compound, is the sole corrosion product (CP) of methanogen-induced MIC (Mi-MIC). To simulate natural environmental conditions, we developed and introduced the multiport flow column system (MFC), a multi-sectional corrosion flow-cell. Using the MFC, we obtained ten times higher corrosion rates than previously reported. With a combination of several analytical techniques, such as ToF-SIMS, SEM-EDS and FIB-SEM, we found strong indication that siderite is not the sole corrosion product of Mi-MIC. The corrosion layers contained phosphorus, oxygen, magnesium, calcium and iron. The differences in the CP between static and dynamic 22environments demonstrated the impact of testing procedures on the corrosive potential of methanogens. To further verify and deepen our understanding of Mi-MIC, we are currently studying the influence of additional environmental parameters (e.g. pH, salinity, flow rate) on MiMIC. Overall, results of this study will expand the current understanding of MIC from both analytical and mechanistic points of view, thus aiding the development of different mitigation strategies for various industry sectors.