When I travel to different sites reviewing mechanical integrity and inspection programs, the facilities normally have some type of corrosion monitoring program. These programs vary widely from mature programs that have been in place for years and my include a risk-based inspection (RBI) approach and several special emphasis projects as well, or the program may only do inspections and corrosion monitoring because OSHA requires them to have a program. Most of the organizations are somewhere in the middle and do their best to find issues before they potentially become major incidents, but the problem with many types of corrosion is that it’s difficult to find. So how can we improve our odds of finding the corrosion?
A corrosion review of your facility will help you understand what types of damages mechanisms/types of corrosion you have in each part of your plant. It will help your team understand what type of corrosion that they are looking for and the most likely places that type of corrosion will occur. Additionally, with the right team you will also know the best inspection techniques to use to find the corrosion. Without a corrosion study, you may have thousands of corrosion monitoring locations that your organization is managing but are they doing you any good? If you have a damage mechanism that is a localized corrosion mechanism and you are simply doing spot ultrasonic testing (UT) on that equipment, your likelihood of finding the corrosion prior to a leak is extremely low. Spot UT will help you understand your general corrosion that might be occurring, but if you have a localized or cracking corrosion mechanism you are wasting your time and money. The corrosion review will make you smarter on Where and How to look for the potential corrosion issues and improve your corrosion monitoring program immensely.
How do I complete a corrosion review for my plant? The American Petroleum Institute (API) has published a document API-970 that will give you an excellent road map to completing a corrosion study and developing corrosion control documents for your organization. The main requirement for completing a good corrosion review is to have the proper cross-functional team available to complete the study. Key team members must include:
• Corrosion Engineer familiar with the process. This will likely be an outside contractor as most companies have limited corrosion specialist and if they do, they are normally extremely busy.
• Process Engineer familiar with the facility being reviewed.
• Inspection
• Operations
• Maintenance
• Engineering
The management of a corrosion monitoring program can be very challenging simply due to the large volume of data that being generated and can be difficult to ‘see the forest through the trees’ sometimes. With a better understanding of the corrosion types likely to occur in your plant, your ability to focus your efforts in the right places will be very beneficial.
Actions to Take:
1) Has our plant completed a corrosion study?
YES,
a. Find the study and review it personally and with your team.
b. Have the recommendations from the study been implemented into your plant’s corrosion monitoring program?
NO,
c. Obtain an estimate for completing a corrosion study and weigh the benefits, risks and value to your plant.
d. Ask the question- Do we know where to look for corrosion in our plant?