Crossbridge Refinery located in Fredericia, Denmark, operates several export pipelines which during recent years have been subject to stray current interference and suffered significant external corrosion despite a Cathodic Protection system has been in place.
Ernesto Santana-Diaz, Senior Corrosion Engineer at Crossbridge explains:
“Initially, the CP system was intensively evaluated with the outcome that a replacement of the pipeline was the best option. However, after the installation of MetriCorr online ER-probes to monitor the interference patterns and correlated corrosion rates, as well as a simultaneous effort to evaluate co-effects of foreign pipelines, the possible issues were identified. Environmental conditions, soil and sea water resistivity, flow temperatures and foreign district heating pipeline distributions all affected the corrosion of the largest of the export pipeline”, Ernesto says.
“The MetriCorr probes and the investigation was pointing towards updated design and mitigation measures, which saved us the entire replacement of the pipeline” Ernesto concludes.
“We are very happy that our technologies and applications help saving pipelines replacements in this way”, MetriCorr CEO Lars Vendelbo Nielsen comments.
It is usually recognized that the average cost of a kilometer of pipeline exceeds 1 million USD, and therefore it is more than worth investing in technology that can prevent pipeline replacements.
