Steels used in coal gasification vessels and piping (externals) can be exposed to mixtures of hydrogen, water vapor (steam), hydrogen sulfide, methane, carbon monoxide, carbon dioxide, and other gases at temperatures and pressures up to 600°K and 10 MPa. Such mixtures, under certain operating conditions, can either enhance or inhibit crack growth in these steels. As a part of a program to identify thermodynamic conditions for this enhancement or inhibition, fatigue crack growth experiments have been carried out on a 2-1/4Cr-1 Mo (ASTM A542, Class 2) steel in hydrogen, water vapor, and hydrogen sulfide at low pressures (below 133 kPa). The results indicate considerable enhancement of fatigue crack growth by some of these environments and also indicate that the apparent immunity of this material to stress corrosion cracking does not imply the same immunity to corrosion fatigue. The results will be discussed in terms of the influences of temperature, gas pressure and loading variables, and will be interpreted in terms of chemical reaction kinetics.
