Abstract: The corrosion behaviour and mechanism of superpure austenitic stainless steel 00Cr25Ni22Mo2N in urea processing environment was studied using metallography,SEM, TEM,SIMS and AES techniques.The results show that the gas extraction tube made of non-sensitized 00Cr25Ni22Mo2N steel suffered intergranular corrosion.Corrosive media penetrated not only into the tube wall through grain boundaries but also expanded from the boundary towards the interior of the grain.Neither depletion of Cr nor precipitates were found at the grain boundaries.However,P(and Si)was segregated at the grain boundaries to a great extent.Semiquantitative calculation indicates that the P content at the grain boundaries is about 25 wt-%,three orders of magnitude higher than the content within the grain.Sugges- tion is made that the potential difference between the grain and its boundary due to the segre- gation results in the observed intergranular corrosion.

Key words: superpure austenitic stainless steel, intergranular corrosion, P(Si)segregation