Manufacture of chemicals, petrochemicals, and oil & gas production often exposes the processing equipment to highly corrosive fluids. Analyses of the fluids, pressures, and process temperatures have shown Duplex Stainless Steel Pressure Vessels to be highly corrosion-resistant in many of these extreme environments.

In these applications, aggressive fluids come into contact with interior surfaces of the equipment used in the process. Consideration must be given to the effects of process chemistry on the material of construction. Otherwise, manufacturing conditions will rapidly decline, leading to corrosion, and ultimately compromising equipment usefulness and endangering the entirety of the process line.

When this occurs, proper action requires repair and/or replacement of equipment, causing expensive and disruptive downtime of the process.

Specification of Duplex Stainless Steel as the material of construction for pressure vessels offers a long term, cost effective method to prevent damaging corrosion, thus eliminating leaks to the process.

A Duplex Stainless Steel Pressure Vessel from TITAN will possess strong corrosive resistance to localized corrosion, cracking, and stress corrosion.

The following information is provided as background on Duplex Stainless Steel, the alloy characteristics, strengths and how consideration of a Duplex Stainless Steel Pressure Vessel could solve corrosion in your process.

Life Cycle Benefits of Duplex Stainless Steel Pressure Vessels

Duplex Stainless Steel pressure vessels are highly cost-effective over the entire lifecycle of the equipment.  Properly maintained, TITAN Duplex Stainless Steel pressure vessels can operate for decades, making them a very economical choice over other available metals.

Duplex Stainless Steel Pressure Vessels can:

  • Deliver many years of economical service life
  • Eliminate expensive downtime due to equipment failure
  • Provide outstanding corrosion resistance
  • Provide excellent stress cracking resistance

Duplex Stainless Steel offers excellent resistant to corrosion along with very high mechanical strength. With this high corrosion resistance, Duplex Stainless Steel provides more uptime than Carbon Steel or conventional 300 series Stainless Steels.  Its mechanical strength also allows for lighter fabrication and greater design flexibility.

Duplex Stainless Steel the Metal

Duplex Stainless Steels’ beneficial performance is attributable to a combination of austenitic and ferrite alloys in its microstructure, achieving both strength and high corrosion resistance.

With their multitude of applications, the process industries are always in pursuit of the most cost-effective and reliable materials. Duplex Stainless Steel pressure vessels are widely endorsed by plant operations management and maintenance specialists who acknowledge their durability and corrosion resistance against very aggressive fluids.

Compared with some other materials, Duplex Stainless Steel is a less costly material of construction offering high strength even in highly demanding applications. These qualities have led to acceptance and expanded use of Duplex Stainless in pressure vessels, reactors, columns, storage tanks, heat exchangers and piping systems in sulfuric acid processing, production of urea and other fertilizers.

Note:  Due to the proportions of austenitic and ferrite alloys, the Duplex Stainless Steels require considerably more care in welding preparation and fabrication procedures.  Inexperience or less than vigilant attention to these preferred practices can contaminate the resulting welding, rendering the resulting fabrication compromised in strength and corrosion-resistance.

Duplex Stainless Steel Pressure Vessel Designs

TITAN manufactures pressure equipment in accordance with all major international design standards and pressure vessel codes. Manufacturing capacities include widths up to 120″ diameter, 300’ in length and weights up to 200 tons.

Designs and accessories to Duplex Stainless Steel Pressure Vessels include:

  • Solid wall
  • Explosive clad
  • Standard jacket
  • Half pipe jacket
  • Baffles
  • Outlet valves
  • Dip tubes
  • Spargers
  • Agitators
  • Drives

Visit TITAN’s Pressure Vessels photo gallery.

Duplex Stainless Steel Corrosion Resistance

Duplex Stainless Steel Vessels are suitable for applications in the chemical processing, pharmaceutical, agricultural, fertilizer, petrochemical, and power industries. They are very effective in processes using salts, acids and other chemicals which can be damaging to lesser materials.

To view a list of process materials where Duplex Stainless Steel is commonly used, please visit Applications of Duplex Stainless Steel.

For a general guide on corrosion resistance, temperatures and concentrations please see TITAN’s publication “Corrosion Resistance of Metals in Various Chemical Media” for additional information.*

*Note: Final selection of material must be based on actual evaluation of the metal in the corrosive medium.

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