Oxygen dissolved in water causes destructive oxygen corrosion in metal pipes and processing equipment. Corrosion byproducts, in turn, cause damage through clogging and closure of lines. In addition, corrosion inhibition in CO2/O2 systems will be the only CO2 balance problem. Therefore, there is a need to effectively remove oxygen from the water in the oil fields. Removing oxygen and bringing it down to less than 10ppb, to prevent significant oxygen corrosion, can be done by adding a suitable oxygen scavenger at the end of the deaeration chamber.
The most widely used oxygen scavengers in the oil production and exploitation industry are the sulfite-bisulfite and metabisulfite families, which are able to eliminate dissolved oxygen in the shortest possible time in the presence of a suitable catalyst. The best efficiency can be obtained at a pH slightly higher than 7.