Microbiologically influenced corrosion (MIC) has become a major problem in the oil and gas industry due to frequent deployment of water flooding in enhanced oil recovery that increasingly leads to water wetting of pipeline walls [1]. Compared with oil wetting, water wetting greatly increase microbial diversity and population. Another key factor is that oil and gas infrastructures are aging allowing more time for microbes to corrode. MIC was regarded as a primary culprit that caused the Alaskan pipeline leak in March 2006, resulting in a major spike in the global oil prices [2]. MIC is also of concern in many other industries such as water utilities and nuclear power plants [3, 4]. Until recently, there has been no clear mechanism that clarifies why and how MIC happens in nature because of its complexity. This makes it difficult to identify the role of MIC in various corrosion failure cases amid a myriad of other factors such as chemical corrosion caused by CO₂ and H₂S.

The biocatalytic cathodic sulfate reduction (BCSR) theory proposed by Gu et al. [5] is based on bioenergetics. BCSR explains why and when sulfate reducing bacteria (SRB) attack occurs. The theory states that an SRB biofilm on a steel surface needs energy for its growth or maintenance. When there is a lack of electron donors (e.g., a lack of organic carbon due to diffusional limitation), the sessile cells at the bottom of an SRB biofilm will switch to elemental iron as an alternate electron donor (fuel) for the oxidation of sulfate in its energy production. Opportunistically, these cells may use the elemental iron simply because there are abundantly available nearby. The following equations can be used to explain the bioelectrochemistry in BCSR. In the SRB attack against carbon steel, the anodic reaction is elemental ion oxidation that releases electrons, while the cathodic reaction is sulfate reduction utilizing the electrons.

In the Nernst equations above, R is the universal gas constant, T the absolute temperature and F the Faraday constant. SHE denotes the standard hydrogen electrode. There is actually no physical cathode for the sulfate reduction because it happens in the cytoplasm to SRB cells. The use of the word “Cathodic” here attempts to emulate chemical corrosion mechanisms when both anode and cathode are typically the steel surface. Here the word merely suggests that it is the reduction reaction in the corrosion mechanism.

Unlike an organic carbon, elemental iron in a steel matrix is insoluble. Its oxidation occurs outside SRB cells. The released electrons must be transported across the cell wall into the cytoplasm inside SRB cells because sulfate reduction takes place there intracellularly with enzyme catalysis. This means the SRB biofilm must be electrogenic, i.e., capable of cross-cell wall electron transfer. It utilizes an exogenous oxidant (i.e., sulfate). This type of MIC is classified by Gu [6] and Xu et al. [7] as Type I MIC. It includes other microbes such as nitrate reducing bacteria (NRB) that utilize nitrate as the exogenous oxidant. There is also another major type of MIC known as Type II MIC, which is caused by secreted metabolites that are corrosive oxidants such as protons and organic acids (proton reservoirs). Because the sessile cell density in a biofilm can be 100 times or higher than that of planktonic cells in the bulk fluid, the pH underneath a biofilm, such as a biofilm of an acid producing bacterium (APB), can be much lower than the pH in the bulk fluid. Type II MIC is also electrochemical, involving Reaction Eq (1) as the anodic reaction and Eq (5) as the cathodic reaction.

In this case, both anode and cathode are on the steel surface. The oxidation and reductions reactions are no different from the ones in abiotic acid attack such as acetic acid corrosion. It should be noted that Type I and Type II MIC in some cases may occur together. For example, H₂S is a corrosive metabolite generated by electrogenic SRB in their metabolism. Although in SRB MIC against carbon steel, Type II MIC is much less important than Type I [8].

Not all biofilms are electrogenic. When organic carbon is used as the electron donor, cross-cell wall electron transfer (i.e., electrogenicity) is not needed because organic molecules dissolve into the fluid and they are oxidized intracellularly after they diffuse into the cytoplasm. In Type I MIC, electron transfer is likely a limiting step because it is a rather elaborate and difficult process. Hernandez and Newman [9] suggested that extracellular electron transfer (EET) is one of the most fundamental methods for some microbes to generate energy for survival. In fact, EET has been widely investigated in microbial fuel cell (MFC) research in the pursuit of increased electricity output. Du et al. [10] reviewed the two EET types: (a) direct electron transfer (DET), and (b) mediated electron transfer (MET). Both EET types may be used by SRB. Fig 1 illustrates Type I MIC mechanism for SRB and the involvement of DET and MET [11].

In DET, sessile cells attach directly to a steel surface. The membrane-bound c-type cytochrome facilitates the EET. For a sessile cell that is very short distance away from a steel surface, conductive nanowires (pili) may be secreted to link a sessile cell with a steel surface for EET. Sherar et al. [12] found that starving SRB secreted pili to link them to a steel surface only when their oil-field SRB was cultured in a culture medium that lacked organic carbon. Apparently, the SRB cells facilitated the harvest of electrons from elemental iron by secreting the pili. Venzlaff et al. [13] also confirmed the direct uptake of electrons from carbon steel by SRB using electrochemical techniques.

Zhang et al. [14] demonstrated that two common electron mediators, riboflavin and flavin adenine dinucleotide (FAD), accelerated the MIC of 304 stainless steel by the corrosive SRB Desulfovibrio vulgaris. This strongly suggests that EET could be a bottleneck in SRB MIC. In the oil and gas industry, the overwhelming piping material is carbon steels that are used for downhole tubing and transport pipelines. SRB grow much denser biofilms on carbon steels compared with stainless steels as demonstrated by Fig 2. For example, in the absence of any biocide treatment, D. vulgaris sessile density is 10⁴ times higher on C1018 carbon steel than on 304 stainless steel, leading to much higher weight loss and pit depth for the carbon steel [14, 15]. There have been some field MIC failure cases that showed surprisingly high corrosion rates in carbon steel pipelines that could not be repeated in the lab [16]. Thus, it is imperative to verify the hypothesis that EET is a major bottleneck in Type I SRB MIC attack of a carbon steel, and the MIC can be accelerated considerably in the presence of a naturally occurring electron mediator.

Planktonic SRB cell counts for 7 days are shown in Fig 3. Each data point represents the average reading of three coupons from the same vial. The pH values after 7 days were measured, with the addition of SRB in the absence of a mediator, the pH was 6.6 ± 0.5, while it were 6.7 ± 0.3 and 6.8 ± 0.2, respectively when 10 ppm FAD and riboflavin was added. The results demonstrate that both FAD and riboflavin did not increase the cell concentrations and influence the pH. Lactate in the culture medium was the preferred organic carbon for D. vulgaris and its concentration (initially 3.5 g/L) was orders of magnitude higher than the concentration (10 mg/L) of the electron mediators. Electron mediators did not show an increase of the sessile cell counts on coupon surfaces either. The MPN sessile cell counts on coupon surfaces were all 10⁷ cells/cm² with and without an added electron mediator. It should be noted that the MPN cell counts are expressed in orders of magnitude because the method could not tell minor differences. The SRB test kit was used to quantify sessile cells because it was difficult to count the sessile cells using a hemocytometer due to presence of large quantities of FeS particles in the sessile cell samples that resembled SRB cells under microscope.

The normalized weight loss data after 7 days in Fig 4 suggest that when an electron mediator was added, the weight loss increased considerably. The average weight loss of the abiotic control was 0.2 mg/cm². With the addition of mediators, the weight loss did not increase suggesting that the mediators themselves were not corrosive. This is consistent with Fig 5, which shows that there were no obvious surface changes on the coupon surfaces when the mediators were added to the abiotic culture medium. With the addition of SRB in the absence of a mediator, the average weight loss was 2.1 ± 0.63 mg/cm², while it reached 3.4 ± 0.70 mg/cm² and 3.1 ± 0.63 g/cm², respectively when 10 ppm FAD and riboflavin was added. They represent a weight loss increase of 62% and 48%, respectively over the control without a mediator. The statistical significance between the SRB culture without a mediator and the addition of a mediator was confirmed by the P values, which were 0.0011 (riboflavin added) and 0.0053 (FAD added), respectively. Both were much smaller than the threshold of 0.05. Thus, the weight loss data clearly indicate that when a mediator was added, the corrosion became more severe.

In Fig 6A, the largest pit caused by the SRB culture without a mediator was approximately 10 μm (horizontal surface diameter). When 10 ppm riboflavin was added, the largest pit shown in Fig 6B was approximately 100 μm, which was 10 times larger than. With the addition of 10 ppm FAD, the largest pit size reached 40 μm (Fig 6C). These pitting data are consistent with the weight loss data above.

Fig 7 shows that the largest pit depth caused by SRB in the absence of a mediator was 10.4 μm. As shown in Figs 8 and 9, with the addition of 10 ppm riboflavin and 10 ppm FAD, the largest pit depth in both treatments was 22.2 and 20.2, respectively. This means that the electron mediators roughly doubled the deepest pit depth compared with the control. MIC failures are typically caused by pinhole leaks. This means the deepest pit matters most. Doubling of the largest pit depth may potentially lead to an MIC pitting failure of a carbon steel pipeline in half of the time.

All the new experimental data above confirm the hypothesis that EET is a key bottleneck in MIC of C1018 carbon steel, and adding an electron mediator considerably increased the MIC by an SRB biofilm. This finding is important to the oil and gas industries, which uses carbon steels for critical installations such as downhole tubing, seawater injection lines, gathering lines and transport lines. Because these environments are typically anaerobic with the presence of sulfate, SRB biofilms are a leading cause of MIC.

In the field, SRB co-exist with other microbes in a synergistic biofilm community. Other microbes in the biofilm consortium may also contribute to the MIC either directly or indirectly. For example, Shewanella putrefaciens was found to coexist with SRB in oil pipelines and water tanks [19, 20]. S. putrefaciens is able to produce extracellular electron mediators such as FAD and riboflavin, which was confirmed in MFC research [21, 22]. In a biofilm consortium, it is possible that S. putrefaciens (or another microbe) can secrete an electron mediator to facilitate SRB sessile cells’ harvest of electrons from elemental iron. In return, S. putrefaciens receives energy through the so-called interspecies energy transfer [23]. It has been well known that field MIC corrosion rates can be much higher than those in laboratory tests. This may be due to the synergistic nature of field biofilm consortia that is difficult to reproduce in the laboratory setting.

Experimental data in this work demonstrated that two common electron mediators, riboflavin and FAD, at a low concentration (10 ppm) both were capable of increasing the MIC of C1018 carbon steel considerably in terms of weight loss and pit size by D. vulgaris. This work supported the EET aspect of the BCSR theory. It confirmed that MET was an important route for D. vulgaris electron transfer. The data suggest that cross-cell electron transfer of the electrons released by elemental iron oxidation to the cytoplasm of SRB is a bottleneck in the MIC of C1018 carbon steel by electrogenic SRB. This finding is important in MIC forensics involving unusually fast MIC corrosion rates. There are other practical applications such as deliberately adding electron mediators for accelerated MIC lab testing or for the lab prediction of worst-case scenario (patent pending). It also points out the possibility of suppressing the secretion of electron mediators to reduce MIC.