Corrosion costs the Oil and Gas industries alone billions of dollars annually in downtime, production
loss, equipment failures, environmental contamination and most importantly personnel injuries and
fatalities. Many of these corrosion related costs could be significantly reduced by endorsing the use of
continuous corrosion monitoring technologies as part of a plant comprehensive corrosion management
program.
In the last few years, there has been an increasing demand for online corrosion and/or erosion
monitoring tools for monitoring wall thickness measurements on pipelines and process equipment.
Corrosion-related failures can be significantly minimized if a rigorous corrosion monitoring and
inspection program, including predictive maintenance and real-time monitoring tools, are in place.
Utilizing a non-intrusive approach will provide flexibility in selecting the monitored locations in nonaccessible
or congested areas where intrusive devices may not have room to function.
This paper will address a field assessment program conducted recently on a new non-intrusive multisensor
corrosion monitoring tool. The evaluated technology is based on Acoustic Guided Lamb Waves
(AGLW). The objectives of this field assessment were to identify the applicability and limitations of this
technology. Based on the obtained data, the system was able to report the wall thinning changes and
validate its functionality.
Key Words: Multi-sensors technology (MST), corrosion erosion monitoring (CEM), Acoustic Guided
Lamb Waves (AGLW)