Technology & Services
Developments in Realtime Corrosion Monitoring Recent Advances in
Techniques and Management, Display and Correlation of Data
a report by
Cormon
Introduction
Corrosion monitoring of pipelines and plants
associated with oil and gas operations has been a
requirement for many years, and, in particular, the
need to develop new approaches to cope with the
many challenging and aggressive environments that
feature in developing new reservoirs, with a
requirement to do this both safely and economically.
The costs of production losses and unplanned
shutdowns which arise due to corrosion (a large
percentage of the overall losses are corrosion-related)
can be very high and, with the added desire for
excellence in plant operation and safety, the drivers
for effective online corrosion monitoring can be
readily appreciated. Typically, three-quarters of all
incidents in normal oil and gas operations are
corrosion-related, resulting in unplanned shutdowns,
damage to the environment and production penalties.
Corrosion Monitoring arose to provide more up-to-
date information on corrosion performance with less
emphasis on historical information and inspection
techniques. In addition, there was a continual need
to ensure that the corrosion control programmes
were effective and the corrosion rates were within
the specified design limits. An industry has evolved
over several decades that uses different techniques to
measure corrosion in its various forms.
Some of these techniques are described briefly below.
Weight Loss Techniques
A baseline technique is the weight loss coupon,
which is used frequently to determine the
morphology or structure of the corrosion. It is an
intrusive device and requires manual intervention for
installation and frequent retrievals and re-weighing
for useful data to be obtained.
Metal Loss Techniques
To avoid the need for continual retrievals of coupons
the electrical resistance (ER) principle was developed,
in which an exposed sample element of the target
BUSINESS BRIEFING: EXPLORATION & PRODUCTION: THE OIL & GAS REVIEW 2004
material was compared to a compensating hidden
(reference) element. The technique is used extensively
in oil and gas applications. Corrosion causes a change
in the surface area of the sample element and, when
compared to the reference element, gives rise to an
analogue signal, which can be used to determine metal
loss and hence corrosion of the element and, by
implication, the process or plant at that location.
Linear Polarisation Resistance
Linear polarisation resistance (LPR) is one of the most
commonly used electrochemical techniques, and
provides instantaneous corrosion rate values in a
continuous conductive (water) phase. Its most
common use is in cooling water systems, and it is based
upon applying a small perturbation voltage across two
or more exposed electrodes. The current flow is
proportional to the corrosion rate and a factor may be
applied to the current to give a value of corrosion rate.
Electrochemical Noise
Electrochemical noise (ECN) is a technique that
relies upon the natural perturbations arising on three
or more exposed electrodes. By analysing the low-
level voltage and current signals from freely
corroding electrodes, information on corrosion
activity can be derived. The data does require
interpretation in order to obtain useful information.
Pitting or localised corrosion detection is an area in
which the technique has been used particularly.
Hydrogen Monitoring
Corrosion reactions produce hydrogen, which can
be collected either in an intrusive or non-intrusive
mode. The technique is used occasionally in the oil
and gas sector in wet sour environments, which have
a tendency to produce nascent hydrogen that can
migrate through pipeline or plant and cause serious
structural problems.
Biofilm Monitoring
Corrosive products do arise from the activity of
bacteria and are most commonly met in cooling 1
 Technology & Services
Figure 1: Typical CEION Corrosion and Erosion
Probes for Installation into Pipelines and Plants
water systems. There are several techniques available
that depend either on manual intervention to collect
samples on exposed studs, or the measurement of the
change of heat transfer over a tube array arising from
the influence of biofouling product and scale, etc.
Recent Developments
Recent developments in metal loss techniques have
resulted in substantial improvements in performance.
The Cormon CEION system allows up to 100-
times improvement in performance in oil and gas
applications and, moreover, the flexibility to provide
long-life systems, which are required for the new
challenges in oil and gas production deepwater,
subsea. Examples of these include West Coast Africa,
Brazil and Gulf of Mexico and are classed as high-
temperature/high-pressure applications.
These improvements arise out of developments in
signal analysis and management techniques coupled
with the ability to measure and compensate for
temperature variations that previously tended to
mask small changes in corrosion and render signals
sometimes unreliable.
Typical probe configurations are shown in Figure 1.
Sensitivity is about 10 pulse position modulation
(PPM) for a 0.5mm element, which is equivalent to
a few nanometres of detection, up to about micron
in a 19mm-thick ring element in a spool.
Field Application Examples
The improved sensitivity and flexibility allows many
new applications to be addressed, as the ability to
perform in some applications has been severely
curtailed by the limitations of some, notably metal
loss techniques. Applications and case studies of
these are:
1. Cormon acknowledges the assistance provided by Woodside Energy in general, and in particular from Stephen Rennie and
2 Frank Egan, of Woodside Energy and from the North Rankin A Platform staff.
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corrosion inhibitor optimisation;
erosion monitoring; and
subsea corrosion/erosion monitoring methods.
Corrosion Inhibitor Optimsation1
Due to the speed of response from this technology, it
is possible to close the feedback loop of the
chemical injection of corrosion inhibitors. Realtime
control is possible, allowing the operators to vary the
injection rates of chemicals as flow conditions
fluctuate. The corrosion rate can be monitored and a
maximum allowable corrosion rate can be set and
acted upon by the operators.
In late August 2000, CEION probes were installed
on Woodside Energys platform, North Rankin A,
on the north-west shelf of Western Australia. Using
a standalone data logger, corrosion rates were
monitored hourly as the chemical inhibition levels
were varied (see Figure 2).
The CEION corrosion monitoring system permitted
the operators of the oil and gas-producing North
Rankin platform to have a closer look at the corrosion
characteristics of two lines that had historically been
difficult to monitor, and to determine the extent of
temporary corrosion protection afforded by the
residual corrosion inhibitor after the chemical
inhibition pumps are switched off.
The CEION probe indicated that the system was
no longer inhibited six hours after the pumps were
switched off under normal flowing conditions. This
information allows the client to make informed
decisions during periods when it is necessary to shut
down the chemical inhibition pumps.
It was also found that the corrosion inhibitor film
became effective one hour after the pumps were
switched back on. However, it took several hours
before the piping system could be considered to be
completely inhibited from corroding.
The response times to the changes in inhibition were
quicker and far better than the traditional ER probes,
sampling and non-destructive testing (NDT) methods.
The technology lent itself ideally to aiding the
platform operators in optimising the corrosion
inhibitor required for the North Rankin A.
Erosion Monitoring2
The effects of sand production can be very serious
and can often result in a failure within hours or days
 Developments in Realtime Corrosion Monitoring

of the onset of high sand production levels. Plant Figure 2: Woodside North Rankin A, Metal Loss Plot
may be damaged due to erosion, or sand may clog
pipelines and vessels and interrupt production. The
producing reservoir may also be severely damaged by
sand production.

The most reliable technique for the detection of sand

and for the on-going monitoring of sand production
and its effect on the plant is the use of intrusive
sensors. Being exposed directly to the effects of sand,
they can determine in a variety of ways the effect of
sand production (not all production will result in
erosive conditions) on a sacrificial element and be
used to initiate a controlling action depending on the
severity of the erosion.

Intrusive techniques have traditionally been based on

the ER principle of monitoring. A gradual indication Figure 3: Graph of Erosion due to Sand, from Gas and Multi-phase Flow-line
of erosion may be monitored to achieve: (BP)

an early alarm of potentially damaging erosion;

and

a continuous monitoring of the effects of sand

erosion in circumstances where sand is being
produced and the concern is to monitor its
on-going effect on the plant.

ER-based systems are limited by their overall

resolution (1/1000), so that fast responding devices
require very thin elements with correspondingly
short working lives. These elements are also
physically fragile in high velocity flows.

The development by Cormon of CEION

technology has greatly enhanced the ability of
intrusive sensors to detect small amounts of erosion
an improvement in resolution of two orders of
magnitude over ER. Detection levels as low as 1nm
are achieved with elements with thicknesses of
several millimetres. A typical case study and results
are shown in Figure 3, which details the performance
of the CEION system in an offshore gas and
multiphase flow-line, owned by BP, using retrievable
probes. Arising from this study, it was concluded that
the probe was very useful for both detecting sand
and, more importantly, indicating how much metal
was lost due to a combination of erosion, corrosion
and erosion-corrosion.
Subsea Corrosion Applications
The most challenging environment to date arises
from the development of deepwater subsea
reservoirs. By the nature of the application,
equipment must operate for at least 25 years without
attention and yet provide information reliably as to
corrosion/erosion conditions in hostile environ-
ments. Equipment must be self-contained and
survive water pressure at depths of 2,500m and
15,000 pounds per square inch (psi) (1,035 barg)
process pressures at 180C.
Using the flexible CEION technology Cormon has
provided two broad families of products
a subsea probe suitable for corrosion or erosion
monitoring (see Figure 4); and
a Ring Pair Corrosion Monitoring (RPCM)
spool that is inserted into the pipeline (see Figure
5) especially for gas and multiphase flow lines.
Spools may also be applied to subterranean and
onshore pipelines and its use provides data to assure
that the chemical inhibitors are protecting the pipe

2. NACE Paper # 04355 A Comparison of Monitoring Techniques for Improved Erosion Control; A field study Bill
Hedges and Andy Boddington, BP Trindad & Tobago. 3

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 Technology & Services
Figure 4: Typical Long-life CEION Subsea Probe
Suitable for Erosion/Corrosion Applications with
Combined Sensing and Data Transmission Facility
Figure 5: Schematic of Subsea Corrosion Monitoring
Spool Showing Three Sets of Ring Pairs (Carbon
Steel, Weldment, Composite) with Combined
Output to Topsides Data Acquisition and Display
Systems
around the full inner circumference of the line. The
concept is to take a typical measurement at the worst
place along the pipeline usually the beginning of
the line where the inhibitor is injected and not fully
mixed, and at the end when coverage of the inhibitor
chemical is likely to be least.
An example of a subsea corrosion monitoring system
3. Information with kind permission of ConocoPhillips.
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is the ConocoPhillips Jade Field Development3, UK
North Sea. This used a 16 subsea line to connect
the Jade platform to Judy and included two
RPCM subsea spools. Each spool consisted of
pairs of rings (one fully exposed, one reference that
does not corrode) in a spool envelope and formed
part of the pipeline. The rings were of the same
material and thickness of the pipeline and the metal
loss and temperature of each segment of the rings is
measured and communicated to a topsides
monitoring and control system on each platform.
The data was linked to a platform-to-platform local
area network (LAN) that allowed access remotely
through terminals.
The operator or plant integrity manager is able to
click the appropriate ring to present metal loss,
temperature and corrosion rate for that ring pair.
Services
Technology on its own does not provide the
solution. In recognising the specialist nature in
deploying technology both for topsides and subsea
applications in oil and gas production and
transportation, Cormon have established service and
support bases in Aberdeen, Houston, Perth (Australia)
and Abu Dhabi. The company also undertakes
assignments including consultancy, audits and surveys
to provide an all-embracing flow assurance capability
for client assets.
Contact Information
Cormon Ltd
Unit 3, Robell Building,
Chartwell Road, Lancing Business Park
Lancing
West Sussex BN15 8TU, UK
Tel: +44 (0) 1903 854800
Fax: +44 (0) 1903 854854