Corrosion and erosion remain two key issues in petroleum production. In the last few years, there
has been an increasing demand for online process control where the rate of metal loss may be
monitored. From an ultrasound perspective these challenges reduce to measuring the wallthickness
over time. By combining permanently installed sensors, low noise measurements and
temperature compensation, lab experiments have shown that it is possible to detect changes in wall
thickness on the sub-micrometer scale. The results suggest that ultrasound technology is well
suited for real-time corrosion monitoring applications, and that it may be used for inhibitor control
and optimization as well.