Tijdens EUROCORR 2022 te Berlijn zal Jeroen Tacq (Sirris te Zwijnaarde/België) aanwezig zijn namens het Interreg project Praktijklab Corrosie & Isolatie om CorrosieLABS toe te lichten.
Voor meer informatie over EUROCORR 2022 klik HIER.
De presentatie van Jeroen kunt u volgen op 31 augustus aanstaande om 16h30 in de sessie ‘Refinery Industry’.
Zie HIER het voorlopige programma.
Corrosion Under Insulation (CUI) and the Impact of Temperature Cycling –
A Simulated Industrial Environment to Study CUI and Evaluate Monitor and Detection Methods
Dr. Jeroen Tacq, Sirris, Zwijnaarde/Belgium; Sebastiaan van der Vaart, Scalda, Terneuzen/The Netherlands; Dirk Michiels, TotalEnergies, Feluy/Belgium; Dr. Clare Watt, KAEFER Isoliertechnik, Bremen/Germany
Corrosion Under Insulation (CUI), is one of the major corrosion phenomena affecting assets in the process industry. It is notoriously difficult to predict when and where CUI will occur, and what the rate of CUI will be under specific circumstances. While CUI is not new, our quantitative understanding of CUI is limited. To cost-effectively manage CUI, a combination of improved understanding, innovative preventive measures (e.g. insulation system design, coatings) and improved detection methods is required (continuous monitoring and NDT screening methods to identify CUI areas). Within the CorrosionLABS project, infrastructure to simulate industrial environments is developed, providing a perfect environment to further develop our understanding and evaluate CUI prevention and detection measures.
As a first experiment, CorrosionLABS is currently investigating the impact of temperature cycling on the rate of CUI. There is some controversy as to whether this accelerates corrosion and whether it is safe to apply the methods described in API581 to evaluate CUI risk under cyclic temperature conditions. The objective of the study is to compare the corrosion rate of pipes with temperature cycling (15°C to 90°C) to pipes at a constant temperature (15°C or 90°C). The impact of directly infiltrating water with and without salts in the insulation will be compared. Two innovative methods to continuously monitor moisture in the insulation are applied in an attempt to investigate how the water, which is infiltrated from a single point, spreads and if the temperature cycling influences the drying-out of the insulation.
We will describe the developed test infrastructure to simulate an industrial environment, as well as the developed test protocol. The preliminary results from the first 6 months of testing will be presented, as well as the opportunities this unique infrastructure offers for future research on CUI and the evaluation of various monitoring and inspection methods.
Acknowledgement: The infrastructure is developed with funding of The European Regional Development Fund (ERDF), under the Interreg Flanders-The Netherlands program.
