Preventing Surface Degradation in Demanding Environments

表面退化过程，如腐蚀和磨损，具有非常重要的社会、经济和安全影响。这些退化过程影响到大量工业部门，包括运输(海运和汽车)、航空航天、核能、石油和天然气及其各自的供应链。仅腐蚀一项每年就给全球工业造成2万亿美元的损失，其中英国每年损失550亿GB，全球石油和天然气部门每年损失13.7亿美元。由此产生的磨损给英国经济造成的成本估计为每年240亿英镑，约占该国GDP的1.6%。该计划旨在解决这个古老的问题，方法是利用计算机建模、原子水平的实验技术、操作手成像和表征方面的进步，以及访问以前未开发的现场数据集，以获得对材料在苛刻环境下表面退化的新见解。BP在研究开发和创新方面投入巨资，并与曼彻斯特大学(UOM)发展了长期、成功的合作。2012年，BP成立了BP国际先进材料中心(BP-ICAM)，投资1亿美元，为期10年，以应对BP核心业务面临的挑战。在英国石油公司主办的“材料技术展望”研讨会之后，表面退化被确定为具有变革潜力的未来研究的高度优先领域。研讨会认为，有机会用机械驱动的方法取代工业经验主义，方法是利用先进的操作技术和多尺度建模，提出有关腐蚀垢和摩擦膜的成核和生长以及如何通过缓蚀剂、润滑剂和表面涂层和处理来控制它们的基本研究问题。这一繁荣伙伴关系将使我们能够补充BP-ICAM内进行的应用研究，提出比BP-ICAM能够解决的更多关于表面退化的基础研究问题。此外，除了ICAM合作伙伴提供的技能之外，这项挑战还需要额外的技能，因此将受益于分别来自爱丁堡大学和利兹大学的材料在高压环境下的行为和摩擦腐蚀方面的关键专业知识。严苛环境中的防止表面退化团队将通过多尺度评估来研究腐蚀垢和摩擦膜如何开始、生长和分解，确定在非常苛刻的环境下抑制或防止降解的方法。该项目将通过了解材料表面和近表面(10-100 nm)流体环境之间的关键相互作用来考虑表面降解的化学和机械影响。它整合了对石油和天然气作业实际条件的先进表面分析研究，以更好地了解退化问题。这是及时的，因为计算建模和成像能力的最新进展使研究人员能够跨越长度和时间尺度，观察动态系统和“现实世界”的条件。最后，在实验室中形成的基本理解将与英国石油公司的大数据集相对照，为研究提供信息并提出挑战。通过对表面退化机理的这些基本见解，该计划将；开发可靠的表面退化预测多尺度模型；提出防止和防止腐蚀和磨损的新材料系统；为行业创建新的标准化测试，用于评估退化，并提出新的缓解战略，以延长运行寿命。

Surface degradation processes, such as corrosion and wear have very significant societal, economic and safety implications. These degradation processes impact a large number of industrial sectors including, transport (marine & automotive), aerospace, nuclear, oil and gas and their respective supply chains. Corrosion alone costs industry globally $2 trillion each year, of which £55 billion per annum is the cost to the UK and $1.37 billion per year the cost to the global Oil & Gas sector. The resulting cost of wear to the UK economy is estimated at £24 billion per annum, approximately 1.6% of the country's GDP. This programme seeks to tackle this age old problem through harnessing advances in computer modelling, experimental techniques at the atomic level, in operando imaging and characterisation and accessing previously untapped in-field data sets to obtain fresh insights into materials surface degradation under the demanding environments in which they operate.BP invest heavily in research development and innovation and have developed a long term, successful collaboration with the University of Manchester (UoM). In 2012, BP founded the BP International Centre for Advanced Materials (BP-ICAM) a $100m, 10 year investment to address challenges across BP's core business. Following a 'Materials Technology Outlook' workshop hosted by BP, surface degradation was identified as a high priority area for future research with the potential for transformational change. The workshop felt there was an opportunity to replace industrial empiricism with mechanistically driven approaches by exploiting advances in-operando techniques and multiscale modelling to ask fundamental research questions about the nucleation and growth of corrosion scales and tribofilms and how to control them through inhibitors, lubricants and surface coatings and treatments. This Prosperity Partnership will enable us to complement the applied research undertaken within BP-ICAM asking more fundamental research questions about surface degradation than BP-ICAM could tackle. Further this challenge requires additional skills beyond those provided by the ICAM partners and so will benefit from key expertise in the behaviour of materials in high pressure environments and tribocorrosion from the Universities of Edinburgh and Leeds respectively.The preventing surface degradation in demanding environments team will look at how both corrosion scales and tribofilms initiate, grow, and breakdown through a multiscale appreciation identify ways to inhibit or prevent degradation under very demanding environments. This project will consider both the chemical and mechanical effects of surface degradation by understanding the key interaction between the material surface and near surface (10-100nm) fluid environment. It integrates advanced surface analysis studies of realistic conditions in oil and gas operations to gain a better understanding of degradation issues. It is timely as recent advances in the power of computational modelling and imaging enable researchers to look across length and time scales and observe dynamic systems and 'real world' conditions. Finally the basic understanding developed in the laboratory will be held up against big in-field data sets from BP to inform and challenge the research.Through these fundamental insights into the mechanisms underlying surface degradation, this programme will; develop reliable predictive multi-scale models of surface degradation; present new materials systems for protection against, and prevention of, corrosion and wear; create new standardised tests for industry to use in the evaluation of degradation and propose new mitigation strategies to extend operational lifetimes.