An equation-of-state for methane for modeling hydrogen attack in ferritic steels

A statistical mechanical-based high temperature and high pressure equation-of-state for methane has been developed using the McQuarrie and Katz formulation based on Leonard-Jones (n, 6) intermolecular potential. Fugacity coefficients for methane have been estimated, and it is shown that for plain carbon steels during hydrogen attack the methane pressures are considerably lower than the fugacities and fall into a physically meaningful range (≤2500 MPa). Further, simple, but reasonably accurate, expressions for both the equation-of-state and fugacity coefficient have been developed for the purpose of modeling hydrogen attack kinetics in ferritic steels.