Two nominally identical chemical units were showing widely different signs of corrosion damage.
While one of the units exhibited low corrosion rates, the other corroded at very high rates causing rapid
failure of stainless steel piping. Traditional monitoring techniques (corrosion coupons and electrical
resistance probes) failed to detect the root cause of the problem. A new approach was used that utilized
the plant distributed control system (DeS) to give plant personnel access to time-trended general and
pitting corrosion from multi-technique, electrochemical probes using a proprietary digital-enabled,
intrinsically-safe transmitter and direct correlation with plant process infonnation. After installing the
probes and connection to the DCS, process operators and engineers were able to identify process
scenarios that wcrc contributing to the diffcrcncc in corrosion rates.