Microbial corrosion of initial perforation on abandoned pipelines in wet soil containing sulfate-reducing bacteria

In this work, the microbial corrosion inside a perforation on an X52 pipeline steel was investigated in wet soil containing sulfate-reducing bacteria (SRB) by biotesting, electrochemical measurements, including open-circuit potential, electrochemical impedance spectroscopy and potentiodynamic polarization, and surface analysis techniques such as 3D topographic imaging, scanning electron microscopy and energy-dispersive x-ray spectrum. Results show that the further corrosion rate of the initial perforation on pipelines is not uniform along its depth direction, and the corrosion kinetics depends on the availability of microorganism such as SRB in the environment. In abiotic environments, the perforation close to the solution side corrodes more rapidly than that at the soil side. However, in SRB-containing environments, the corrosion kinetics is different, where the middle of perforation possesses the greatest corrosion rate, which is attributed to the microbially accelerated corrosion. There are generally more sessile SRB cell counts on the steel near the solution phase than that at the soil side. The corrosion of the perforation could be attributed to the high counts of sessile SRB cells and their starvation effect, making the SRB extract electrons directly from the steel.