Aberdeen Branch Corrosion Awareness Day

Aberdeen Branch, Latest News

Aberdeen Corrosion Awareness Day August 2017 Newsletter

Aberdeen Branch News

Aberdeen Branch, Latest News

The final evening event of 2017 was held on Tuesday the 30th May, with 50 attendees representing a wide range of sponsors and also many visiting guests.  The Branch was once again honoured to have the presence of ICorr President Sarah Vasey, who provided a welcome update on HQ Plans and thanked the Branch Committee for all its efforts over a very successful 2016-2017 Session.

A technical paper entitled “A Review of State of the Art in Corrosion under Insulation Testing (CUI)” was presented by Simon Daly, Group Oil & Gas Segment Manager of Hempel A/S, who explained the company’s long involvement with CUI R&D, via its association with the Danish Technical University in Copenhagen.

Billions of dollars are spent worldwide due to CUI issues, and as there are many operating variables, failure risks and repair costs associated with undetected CUI, any attempt to lessons these can only be to the Industry’s advantage.

Frequently the weak areas are field joints with field repairs of piping and coating systems difficult to equal in quality to the factory coating systems that are applied under controlled conditions. Similarly external cladding may not be of consistent quality in terms of weather proofing and sealing abilities.

It is not often realized that coatings hidden under insulation must have multiple and simultaneous performance properties and must be resistant in service to, immersion conditions (saturated insulation), thermal cycling (equipment in intermittent use) and varying levels of surface preparation.

Commonly used test methods were reviewed by Simon, along with the benefits and drawbacks of each system. In addition, suggestions were offered for a pre-qualification system which not only takes into account the CUI test itself but also test methods to qualify some of the considerations shown above, as well as likely inclusions in the new ISO standard 19277 ‘Petroleum, petrochemical and natural gas industries – Qualification testing and acceptance criteria for protective coating systems under insulation’, currently under development for CUI protection.

There were many questions from the very attentive audience on a wide range of topics, including future ISO tests on coatings for CRA’s, blasting methods, maintenance painting, life cycle / life extension considerations and use of TSA coatings.

The well supported evening closed with a handover of the Chair to Dr. Yunnan Gao, this year’s Events Co-ordinator, by the current Chair Stephen Tate.

The Branch has one more event before the new session starts, the Annual Corrosion Awareness Day on 29 August at the usual venue, the Palm Court Hotel, which this year is kindly sponsored by Sherwin-Williams.

This course is aimed at graduate engineers, non-corrosion engineers and others working closely with corrosion, (e.g. integrity engineers, inspection engineers, etc.). The full-day course, will comprise a number of lectures covering different aspects of corrosion, providing basic information on corrosion principles and mechanisms of corrosion control, including,

• Introduction to Corrosion and it’s costs, plus corrosion mechanisms and everyday examples, Professor Paul Lambert (Mott MacDonald)
• Mitigation by coatings and materials selection, and corrosion mitigation by chemicals, Malcolm Morris (Sherwin Williams)
• Corrosion mitigation by cathodic protection (sacrificial and impressed current), Nigel Owen (Aberdeen Foundries)
• Corrosion monitoring and microbiology – analysis and  data trending, Dr Carol Devine, North East Corrosion Engineers Ltd
• Corrosion management overview and risk based inspection, Hooman Takhtechian (Oceaneering)
• Corrosion rate modelling, Dr Muhammad Ejaz, Plant Integrity Management Ltd.

The objective of this course is to improve understanding of corrosion processes and to raise awareness of corrosion management.  The course is hosted by ICorr Aberdeen through kind assistance of its local / national sponsors. As spaces are strictly limited, they will be allocated on a first-come first-served basis.  For registration or further information please contact admin@icorr.org

For information about all forthcoming Aberdeen branch activities, please contact the new session chair, Dr Yunnan Gao, ICorrABZ@gmail.com. A calendar of local events of interest to corrosion professionals in the Aberdeen area, and the opportunity to sign up to the branch mailing list, is available at https://sites.google.com/site/icorrabz/home

Aberdeen Branch have also established a new Media Centre, which can be found at ICorrABZ@gmail.com

Aberdeen Branch – March News

Aberdeen Branch, Latest News

The third meeting of 2017 was held on Tuesday the 28th March, with 28 attendees representing major companies including Atkins, BP, CNR, DNV GL, Lloyds Register, Oceaneering, Subsea 7, TOTAL and Wood Group. 

The event was an industrial visit to the premises of Cosasco Europe HQ in Aberdeen, to hear about the latest Advances in Probe and Coupon Monitoring and Safe Access / Retrieval of Data, with many live demonstrations being performed.

Derek Morton explains the concept of under insulation monitoring

Specialist equipment for solids erosion tracking and production well management was also illustrated.  Solids determination to minimise erosion and determine the solids-free flow rate is considered essential practice for maximising equipment life. A lively debate followed the speaker presentation with many questions from the audience. 

There were opportunities later to inspect at close hand, a wide range of advanced electronic sampling tools and data reporting systems, with Cosasco consultants and Engineers including, Andy Allan, Mark Maulvaney, Richard Rae, James Taylor, Sandy Tweddle and Dean Smith (Aberdeen Base Manager), all on hand to explain how such devices can be optimised to best advantage.

The activities that followed the technical presentation included informative demonstrations of pressurised retrieval operations of data logging devices, wireless monitoring technologies, probe and chemical monitoring applications and safety isolation devices. There were also a number of poster displays and the wide range of models and test rigs certainly kept the attention of the branch members throughout the evening. Advanced monitoring probes were displayed, including those intended specifically for laboratory use such LPR devices. The differing sensitivity and speed of available probes was clearly demonstrated, along with their most commonly used applications, e.g. Galvanic for water injection service and their relationship to other types of process instrumentation and to chemical injection monitoring was also explained.

The associated retrieval devices (which are either mechanical or hydraulic based tools) can work across a range of pressures up to 6000 psi with telescopic and non-elescopic options. Lower cost intrusive monitoring options, such the use of test coupons were also highlighted.

This event created a tremendous amount of interest from attendees, with an extended networking session following the event and some splendid catering provided by Cosasco staff which was very well received by all.  It proved to be an excellent event in every respect.

James Taylor demonstrates the High pressure mechanical retrieval tool.

The April meeting, held on Tuesday 25th, had 40 attendees from local companies, and considered advances in Cathodic Protection, looking at Simulation Techniques to help assess CP Current Output of Buried Subsea Pipeline Anodes from Field Gradient Measurements, with a most interesting presentation by Tim Froome of Beasy.   The branch evening event followed the annual Aberdeen meeting of the Marine Corrosion Forum, enthusiastically chaired by Phil Dent.

Beasy based in Southampton, serve a wide industry base and focus specifically on how CP field distribution modelling can help better inform our understanding of (often very complex) cathodic protection behaviour and to help engineers assess mitigations and improve the CP design to be implemented.   The application of their specialist software was very effectively demonstrated throughout the evening, showing the use of advanced 3D Graphics to illustrate CP current flows under a range of different conditions such as buried CP current sources (sacrificial anodes), local current activity occurring around pipeline coating defects, long range current flows, vertical current distributions and demonstrations of shielding effects / possible CP under-protection at some sites. The paper very usefully complemented an earlier one given by Tim on CP effects at Crevices and Voids at the afternoons MCF Event.

Tim showed how the modelling software can assist in both determining the overall CP system performance and ensuring adequate protective current distribution, as well as assisting in determining the overall CP system life and the likely relative consumption of CP system anodes.

Many questions from the audience were forthcoming including the future integration of the CP Models with established surveys methods used by major subsea survey contractors, so as to make the best use of gathered CP data and to optimize reporting for the CP Systems owners.

Modelling of CP current flowlines is clearly explained by the speaker.

The CP Flowline phenomenon aroused great interest amongst gathered delegates and the speaker explained that Beasy are intending to develop these relationships forward in the future, so as to assist the subsea industry and the extensive Marine CP markets.

For information about the Aberdeen branch activities please contact our branch secretary, Frances Chalmers, ICorrABZ@gmail.com, alternatively a calendar of local events of interest to corrosion professionals in the Aberdeen area and the opportunity to sign up to the branch mailing list is available at https://sites.google.com/site/icorrabz/home

Aberdeen Branch have also established their new Media Centre, which can be found at https://www.linkedin.com/in/aberdeen-icorr/recent-activity/

First meeting of 2017 for Aberdeen Branch

Aberdeen Branch, Latest News

The first meeting of 2017 was held on Tuesday the 31st January, with 49 attendees from local Aberdeen based companies.  The first guest speaker of the evening was Sarah Vasey, the new ICorr President.

Sarah enthusiastically explained the Institute’s plans for improvement of the bi-monthly journal – Corrosion Management (CM), which is being re-launched in a new format with greater technical content and extended papers, together with improvements to the ICorr website. Sarah made it clear that training would become a key focus for the Institute, with improved professional development for members towards Chartered Engineer status. At the end of the evening, Sarah met with all the members of the Aberdeen Committee, many of whom have more than 5 years’ service with the branch.

The technical presentation followed with, Dr Nadimul Faisal and Dr Ghazi Droubi, both lecturers at the School of Engineering, Robert Gordon University (RGU) in Aberdeen, who outlined the main goals of their current research programme into the potential for Acoustic Emission (AE) to detect both cracking and corrosion activity.

Acoustic emission is essentially a non-destructive technique where a test sample is subjected to a stress condition, under which, crack growth, local yielding and corrosion product fracture may occur, resulting in a sudden release of energy that can be detected by transducers.

The speakers described their recent findings from a range of RGU experiments, including those on thin aluminium and steel plates in different corrosive environments.

It is important to note that the AE from corrosion usually releases much less energy than emission from crack growth, and so is more difficult to detect in the field, however the results present a trend (as an exponential curve) between the concentration of the corrosive environment and the energy of the acoustic emission signal.

AE only occurs when corrosion scales fracture and corrosion needs to be active, although the presence of inactive / previous corrosion may be found by causing the scale to fracture by changing the strain sufficiently in the base material.

An extensive range of questions followed from the large audience during which the practical application of AE within the energy sector was further explored. Generally the role of AE was perceived as being in support of other NDT technologies and for specialised applications such as inspection of tank floors, and occasionally for critical components of high value, or high production impact.

The February meeting, held on Tuesday 28th, had over 50 attendees from local companies, and the guest speakers were, Dr Jake Davies of Permasense HQ, and his Aberdeen based Technical Support colleague Gary Wallace, who had recently joined from ConocoPhillips UK Production Well Integrity Division.

This most informative evening was entitled “Monitoring High Temperature Corrosion Attack: Correlation between Corrosiveness and results from Online Corrosion Monitoring”.

The speakers presented a wide range of successful Permasense wall thickness monitoring applications, from Upstream, Midstream and Downstream Energy Sector Operations, developed over a period of more than 10 years in partnership with BP and Imperial College London.

They emphasized the need to continuously gather quality real-time data to allow accurate determination of the rate of internal damage to key production components, operating under high temperature, high pressure and variable flow conditions.

It was pointed out that more traditional and less automated methods may provide over-cautious and sometimes unreliable information, owing to their reduced sampling frequency, manual nature and limitations on safe access. The availability of enhanced pipe wall data from all sources, can raise confidence levels, facilitate longer service intervals, and minimize production losses. A large number of case studies were used to illustrate these points and the potential gains from such systems.

It was emphasised however that all truly holistic inspection regimes utilize a full range of intrusive and non-intrusive devices for fluids and solids management to ensure continued safe operation of ageing assets. As with other complimentary monitoring devices, a recent key change in the application of such technologies has been the huge advances in wireless data transmission, greatly improved battery life and much improved integration with plant control systems, to provide ‘side by side’ data that is now much more meaningful to integrity specialists.

The closing question and answer session covered many diverse topics that truly demonstrated the value of evening, the level of interest and its excellent speakers. A wide range of Clamped and Magnetic wall thickness monitors were then made available for the audience to inspect.

For information about the Aberdeen branch activities please contact the branch secretary, Frances Chalmers, ICorrABZ@gmail.com, alternatively a calendar of local events of interest to corrosion professionals in the Aberdeen area, and the opportunity to sign-up to the branch mailing list, is available at https://sites.google.com/site/icorrabz/home.