The Post
Anastasia Nicholas
Two faculty members from Ohio University’s Department of Chemical and Biomolecular Engineering have been recognized for their scholarly articles published in CORROSION, a leading research journal.
Two papers written by Srdjan Nesic, director for OU’s Institute for Corrosion and Multiphase Technology, were ranked eighth and 11th on the journal’s “Top 20 most cited” list.
“There’s probably two major criteria that you can judge somebody’s success in the field of science: works published and how often you get cited,” Nesic said. “I was honestly quite surprised to learn two of my articles were the most cited ever. That was sort of special.”
A paper written by Yoon Seok-Choi, associate director of research for the Institute for Corrosion and Multiphase Technology, is one of the top-viewed articles in CORROSION, with 1,100 views.
“This is one of the two most prestigious journals in the area,” Nesic said.
Nesic’s first article, “An Electrochemical Model for Prediction of Corrosion of Mild Steel in Aqueous Carbon Dioxide Solutions,” was ranked eighth on the “Top 20 most cited” list. It describes an unprecedented theoretical model for predicting internal corrosion of mild steel pipelines.
“That (model) was a big step forward,” Nesic said. “I put a lot of things together in a way that readers really liked and appreciated. We still use that kind of stuff across the whole industry.”
Nesic’s article that ranked 11th on the list, “A Mechanistic Model for Carbon Dioxide Corrosion of Mild Steel in the Presence of Protective Iron Carbonate Films — Part 1: Theory and Verification,” describes the “next generation model of the same kind,” according to a report published by the Russ College of Engineering and Technology.
Choi’s paper, “Effect of H2S on the Corrosion Behavior of Pipeline Steels in Supercritical and Liquid CO2 Environments,” focuses on the corrosion properties of pipeline steels with different amounts of water in natural gas transportation pipelines.
The study was funded by PETRONAS, a Malaysian oil company. Before the company started building its systems, it wanted to know the risk for corrosion, Choi said. PETRONAS will create guidelines for their field based on the study’s findings.
“Choi is one of our leaders this year,” Nesic said. “We often publish together, almost all the time. I work very closely with him.”
Choi has completed two phases of research with PETRONAS and began a third phase in July 2016, which he expects to last another two years.
“Basically what we are doing is checking their possibility in terms of corrosion risk,” Choi said. “We scaled up the test in order to present their pipeline condition correctly in how to prevent corrosion.”
Nesic said his program has about 40 members, 20 of which are students, and typically has a couple million dollars’ worth of research taking place every year, in about two thousand different projects. The research takes place at OU.
“There’s a lot of stuff cooking here all the time,” Nesic said.
Choi said his favorite research includes everything concerning corrosion. He said the main focus in his center is corrosion related to oil and gas transporting pipelines.
“Those areas are my main interest,” he said. “Usually for corrosion research, first we need to know why different types of corrosion happen under different circumstances. The final goal is how to prevent corrosion with different conditions. That’s what I usually like to research.”
Alternatively, Nesic said he could not pinpoint a particular favorite area of research and just likes to keep learning.
“Testing and research are often ambiguous terms,” he said. “Testing is more of a routine. I like research because it is moving into the unknown all the time. It doesn’t have to be a particular area. Sometimes corrosion, sometimes not.”