What Is Corrosion Monitoring?
Corrosion monitoring can be described as "The regular measurement of corrosion or corrosivity as it effects an asset". It is most often used to make comparisons between actual and predicted corrosion rates, or for the evaluation of measures taken in prevention or mitigation. Some but not all corrosion monitors are sensitive to erosion that may occur in process plants due to high flow rates and entrained solids.
The asset may equally be a pipeline, a concrete bridge, a large HVAC system in a building, an offshore oil & gas facility or a printed circuit in a computer. When that part of the asset that is of interest is inaccessible, simple methods such as visual inspection or manual measurement cannot be used and special techniques must be introduced. This is especially true of continuous processes where internal corrosion may advance at a rapid rate and lead to catastrophic failure long before traditional "inspection" can detect it. Corrosion Monitoring has therefore, come to be associated mainly with internal corrosion of process equipment, although there are a wide range of other applications where the techniques can do valuable work.