Visible pipeline corrosion prevention

Pipeline corrosion is a leading cause of pipeline failure. Digipipe provides pipeline corrosion prevention techniques to help you protect your pipeline and the environment.

Pipeline corrosion protection should always be on a pipeline engineer’s mind. Pipeline corrosion affects all kinds of pipelines and can result in catastrophic incidents. The pipeline industry needs powerful corrosion prevention and monitoring solutions to ensure safe and reliable operation.  

What is pipeline corrosion?

Corrosion is the deterioration of the pipeline over time.  It is caused by an electrochemical reaction between the material of the pipe, such as iron or steel and its environment.  Corrosion can occur both on the inside of the pipeline, caused by the products flowing through it, and on the outside due to environmental factors such as soil composition.

Pipelines have a long lifetime. Over years and decades of operation, they carry a range of products, including hazardous ones, that consistently cause wear on the pipeline's walls as they flow through it. This wear causes internal corrosion that weakens the pipe and increases the risk of incidents, such as leaks. When combined with the risk of external corrosion, the need for reliable and effective pipeline corrosion protection and monitoring techniques is clear.

Types of pipeline corrosion

Operators need to be aware of various types of pipeline corrosion. Some of the most common include:

• Oxygen Corrosion – Better known as rust, oxygen corrosion is caused by a reaction between oxygen and water that creates an oxide layer (i.e., rust) that can gradually corrode a pipe
• Uniform Corrosion – Similar to oxygen corrosion, a reaction between oxygen and water causes uniform corrosion along the length of a pipeline, resulting in continuous wall thinning
• Pitting Corrosion – When a pipeline suffers from rust or uniform corrosion, localised sections can wear away and small ‘pits’ form in their place that can be very difficult to detect

How do you prevent pipeline corrosion?

While some forms of corrosion are fairly easy to spot (it’s clear when a pipe is rusting), others are much harder to identify or predict before it is too late. Established methods of pipeline corrosion protection include:

• Choosing the right pipe materials and coatings that resist corrosion
• Using cathodic protection by causing the metal to act as an electrical cathode by running a current along the pipe and using a ‘sacrificial metal’ anode that corrodes ahead of the pipeline

At Klarian, we understand the importance of pipeline corrosion prevention. Digipipe offers a solution for monitoring wall thickness to track corrosion and a method for remotely monitoring and optimising cathodic protection.

Klarian’s solutions