Self-Healing Functionality in the Protection of Off-Shore Oil and Gas Assets

Abstract

In a 2016 NACE report, the global cost of corrosion was estimated to be about US$ 2.5 trillion, which amounts to about 3.4% of global Gross Domestic Product (GDP). Industries such as oil and gas that maintain a disproportionate amount of their assets in extremely corrosive environments bear a disproportionate amount of these costs. Add to these costs the environmental and individual safety consequences of material failure due to corrosion and the case for investing in new technologies geared towards improving corrosion protection can hardly be overstated. In this paper, we report on novel additives which leverage the incorporation of microencapsulated healing agents into coating systems with a view towards lengthening their service lives and that of their underlying substrates while minimizing the opportunity cost of downtime associated with maintenance. These self-healing additives have been evaluated in a broad range of coating systems selected to provide the asset owner/operator with a range of options aimed at delivering improved readiness and cost savings across the oil and gas value chain. Here, we provide an overview of evaluations performed in in a range of coating chemistries. For all the data reported, the efficacy of the self-healing additives was evaluated by incorporation into a coating system and comparing relative to the equivalent commercially available coating. For all the comparisons, the control and the self-healing versions of the coating were damaged by scribing followed by equilibration at room temperature for a minimum of 24 h prior to accelerated corrosion testing. A summary of the performance improvements observed upon incorporation of the self-healing additive into coating formulations is provided in Figure 1.