General

This standard establishes guidelines to prevent most forms of environmental cracking of weldments in carbon steel refinery equipment, including pressure vessels, heat exchangers, storage tanks, piping, valve bodies, and pump and compressor cases. Weldments are defined to include the weld deposit, base metal HAZ, and adjacent base metal zones subject to residual stresses from welding.

This standard covers only carbon steels classified as P-No. 1, Group 1 or 2. These classifications can be found in the ASME Boiler and Pressure Vessel Code, Section IX⁹ for pressure vessels, ASME/ANSI B31.3 for process piping, or API Standards 620 and 650 for tanks. It excludes steels with greater than 480 MPa (70,000 psi) minimum specified tensile strength. Other materials may be vulnerable to cracking, but these materials are outside the scope of this standard.

The types of equipment covered by this standard include pressure vessels, heat exchangers, piping, valve bodies, and pump and compressor cases. All pressure-containing weldments or internal attachment weldments to the pressure boundary are included. External attachment weldments are sometimes included as discussed in Paragraph 3.5.1. In addition, this standard may be applied to weldments in some non-pressure-containing equipment, such as atmospheric storage tanks.

Both new fabrication and repair welds are within the scope of this standard. The practices included herein are intended to prevent in-service cracking and are not intended to address cracking that can occur during fabrication, such as delayed hydrogen cracking. In most cases, however, these practices are also helpful in minimizing these fabrication problems. Useful information for preventing delayed hydrogen cracking is provided by F.R. Coe, et. al.¹⁰

Welding processes covered by this standard include shielded metal arc welding (SMAW); gas metal arc welding (GMAW); flux-cored arc welding (FCAW); gas tungsten arc welding (GTAW); and submerged arc welding (SAW). Almost all types of weld configurations are included. For specific exceptions, such as hot taps, hardness limits and postweld heat treatment (PWHT) requirements should be reviewed on a case-by-case basis.

Corrosive refinery process environments covered by this standard can be divided into two general categories: services that could cause cracking as a result of hydrogen charging, and services that could cause ASCC. However, identification of the specific environments to which the guidelines set forth in this standard are to be applied to prevent various forms of in-service environmental cracking is the responsibility of the user. Figure 1 is a simplified schematic showing the interrelationships of the various cracking mechanisms discussed in this standard.

⁽⁹⁾ BSI British Standards (BSI), 389 Chiswick High Rd., London W4 4AL, United Kingdom.

⁽¹⁰⁾ Welding Research Council (WRC), PO Box 201547, Shaker Heights, OH 44120.

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• API STD 653 CHINESE : Tank Inspection, Repair, Alteration, and Reconstruction-Fourth Edition

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