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Corrosion is an omni-present phenomenon – total prevention is mostly uneconomic.  You can, however, minimise its impact. Within buildings the piping systems can be prone to corrosion affecting their service life.  These include:

• HVAC;

• Fire protection and
• Potable water.

At least 30 years service should be expected from piping systems. But with many new buildings and renovations this seems difficult to achieve. Contributing factors include:

• The more wide spread use of thinner gauge piping;
• Sub-standard pipe metallurgy;
• Government regulations and restrictions:
  • That reduce the effectiveness of corrosion inhibitors and microbiological controls or
  • Not holistic in outlook so encourage practices that contribute to corrosion.

With the conflicting demand to provide more reliable building services at lower cost with limited personnel, good building management requires a "predictive maintenance" approach.

Predictive maintenance uses a variety of non-destructive type techniques to identify those specific pieces of equipment are in need of service. Non-destructive testing is also helpful in long-term capital planning and improvement, as well as property acquisition.

The benefits of non-destructive testing have been established in many commercial and industrial situations. Whether used as an annual prediction maintenance tool or as a means to investigate a specific equipment failure there is payback in terms of savings and increased operations reliability.

Typical tools applied in the predictive maintenance of corrosion include:

• Corrosion coupon monitoring;
• Spool pieces and
• Ultrasonic thickness measurements.

At least two of the above should be considered as part of a program to ensure extended pipe service life. Information can be collected about corrosion, pitting and remaining service life. However, the approach must provide value:

• Corrosion coupons monitoring should:
  • Obtain data about maximum pit rate not just uniform corrosion rate, in the case of mild steel;
  • Trend the data, which is more valuable than a result in isolation compared to some "recommended limit" and
  • Obtain an assessment of most likely corrosion mechanism occurring in the system at the time and proposed corrective actions.

• Ultrasonic measurements
  • Determine average and worst case scenarios of pipe wall thickness.

Cetec, as an independent technical service provider, can help Facility Managers with their building management needs. We can provide you with a customised plan for the predictive maintenance of corrosion of piping systems. We offer a corrosion coupon monitoring service, corrosion failure analysis, ultrasonic thickness measurement capability and trend analysis.

Please contact us here for further information or click here to view other articles on corrosion or search for your specific area/s of interest.