New research shows how to reduce ethanol damage to pipelines

In Texas, Pipeline Research Council International, a consortium of pipeline companies, and the U.S. Department of Transportation’s Pipeline and Hazardous Materials Safety Administration funded intense research to find the cause of cracking of steel in ethanol from 2005 through 2012. The fundamental mechanism of how oxygen causes cracking of steel is described in a paper by Liu et al., published in CORROSION journal. This paper is significant because it was extremely difficult to tease apart the fundamental processes occurring in ethanol due to its low electrical conductivity.

The practical implication of this paper is that it’s now possible to prevent stress corrosion cracking without resorting to completely removing oxygen from ethanol, which is expensive to do. Sacrificial metals, for example, can be used to prevent cracking. Inhibitors can also be used to prevent cracking by reforming the protective film on steel faster.