The effects of sulphate reducing bacteria on the corrosion of mild steel embedded in a bentonite-granitic groundwater paste

Preliminary experiments were set up to investigate how the corrosion of forged 0.2% carbon steel is affected by the presence of sulphate reducing bacteria (SRB). The tests used cultures of a thermophilic bacterium Desulphotomaculum nigrificans mixed with bentonite and synthetic groundwater, to simulate a bacteria contaminated backfill, and placed in contact with carbon steel disc specimens held in perspex cells at 500C under anaerobic conditions. The rate of corrosion with exposure was monitored by electrochemical techniques, together with changes in near field redox potential, during the course of the tests. After 340 days exposure the test cells were dismantled to measure the nature and extent of any corrosion that had occurred and to assess the residual SRB content of the bentonite. Recovery of relatively large numbers of bacteria after almost a year's incubation at 500C in this moderately alkaline (pH 9.5) medium has confirmed the pH tolerance of the strain. There was evidence of the initiation of enhanced corrosion occurring in at least two of the five cells that contained SRB, at about three times the rate of the control. This was probably associated with the presence of SRB despite the nutritionally poor environment which existed in the bentonite gel. (author)