The overall objective of this project was to develop and operate by the year 2001 a Continuous Corrosion Surveillance system, which permanently monitors the condition of process installations in service and reduces the number of forced outages due to degradation by corrosion.
This corrosion surveillance system has been developed a tested in industrial environments. It is based on:
- New (electrochemical) sensing techniques which allow on-line monitoring of both uniform and localised types of corrosion: electrochemical frequency modulation technique (EFM) and the electrochemical emission spectroscopy (EES).
- Combination with some selected NDE technologies and devices.
- Creation of improved software tools for "integral" corrosion monitoring and inspection management, allowing expert evaluation of the monitoring data for on-line real-time diagnostics.
During this project a 'Continuous Corrosion Surveillance System' was developed. The following results have been achieved:
- Positive evaluation of the EFM -method and EES-method on laboratory scale.
- The elaboration of a UT inspection procedure and the development of powerful data processing software.
- The first prototype of the data management system is ready. The corrosion management tool is based on the software shell of the ALIAS system into which new modules for corrosion monitoring and NDT analysis were integrated.
- Study on general hardware and software requirements for an industrial monitoring system has been carried out, taking into account the specifications and the requirements of the end-users. Software development has been carried out. An integrated system has been built.
- The integrated system has been tested on industrial scale. Special electrodes have been developed for each application separately. Plant validation has been carried out at Cires, EDP and Akzo. Test results are available from the industrial partners. The industrial benefits, relevance and future potential have been studied.
A 'Continuous Corrosion Surveillance system' has been developed. A prototype is ready and tested in various industrial environments. A corrosion management tool has been developed and integrated in the monitoring system.