During the Stainless Steel World Conference from 12-15 November 2013 in Maastricht, UreaKnowHow.com did moderate again a Workshop for about 30 participants from all over the world. The workshop did focus on “Chloride Stress Corrosion Cracking in Urea Plants” and discussed some theoretical background of stress corrosion cracking together with several examples of chloride stress corrosion cracking in urea plants.

Stainless steel equipment and piping can be suffering from this corrosion phenomena and these examples show that chlorides can origin from a wide variety of sources and thus needs continuous and proper attention.

The example of chloride stress corrosion cracking in high pressure carbamate condensers was discussed in detaila and included a discussion of how to plug heat exchanger tubes in a urea plant. Welding plugs is until today normal practice but has proven not to be reliable. The EST POP-A-PLUG’s proof to be a more easy and more reliable option to plug heat exchanger tubes in ammonia and urea plants.

The workshop was concluded by GEMACO, who invited all participants for a Belgium beer at their conference stand.