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When planning oil wells with stainless steel components, two possible reasons for depassivation have to be considered—chemical depassivation caused by acidizing jobs and mechanical depassivation caused by various tools and hard particles. The study explores conditions causing chemical activation of investigated steels and circumstances under which repassivation occurs after activation. The main focus of the study is to determine, how quickly various steels can repassivate under different conditions and to find pH values where repassivation will occur after depassivation. The investigated steels were ferritic (martensitic or bainitic) in the cases of 13Cr, 13Cr6Ni2Mo, and 17Cr4Ni2Mo, austenitic in the case of 17Cr12Ni2Mo, and duplex (austenitic and ferritic) in the case of 22Cr5Ni3Mo. Potentiodynamic experiments were employed to obtain electrochemical properties of investigated steels, followed by immersion tests to find ultimate conditions, where the steels still retain their passivity. After obtaining this information, scratch tests were performed to study the repassivation kinetics. It was found that repassivation times are similar for nearly all investigated steels independent of their chemical composition and microstructure.

Immersion tests with different stainless steels have been performed, while the pH was stepwise decreased and then increased again. During 8.5‐day exposure, the depassivation and repassivation pH values as a function of pitting resistance equivalent number were determined. There is always a gap between both pH values (depassivation and repassivation), indicating that for every steel, there are conditions where an existing passive layer can be maintained but cannot be rebuilt after depassivation. In such environments, the passive layer is thicker, consisting mainly of molybdenum and iron rich oxides, while chromium is dissolved. Usually, depending on conditions, the passive layer is more chromium‐rich, especially the inner layer. This is relevant, for example, for acidizing jobs in oil and gas industry, proving that repassivation after acidizing will happen promptly, when the pH is increased again.

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