Corrosion Management News

A local barge company has been fined $18,000 for spilling 40,000 gallons of liquid urea ammonium nitrate into the Snake and Columbia rivers. Urea ammonium nitrate is a common fertilizer that is corrosive to steel. An investigation by the Washington Department of Ecology found that two steel tank barges owned and operated by Tidewater Barge Lines, Inc. were not properly maintained, causing the liquid fertilizer to spill into the rivers during three separate incidents in April 2017. The first spill occurred between April 11 and 21 during transfer and storing operations at the Tidewater Snake River Terminal in Pasco. Investigators determined that 16,639 gallons of urea ammonium nitrate were released by Barge No. 78 due to corrosion of the storage tank.

The NACE International Institute has awarded a contract to DNV GL of Dublin, Ohio and APQC of Houston, Texas for data management of the forthcoming International Measures of Prevention, Application, and Economics of Corrosion Technologies study (IMPACT). Under the contract DNV GL and APQC will manage the compilation, analysis and integration of research and data for the IMPACT study. Previous studies on corrosion costs have focused only on costs in the U.S. in a few industry sectors. The IMPACT study will provide a broader range of information by including global data, and by taking a corrosion management practice approach. In addition to analyzing the cost of corrosion, this study will compare global practices in an effort to identify best corrosion management practices globally.

DNV GL has been recognised by the Society of Petroleum Engineers (SPE) as the organisation that has contributed most to asset integrity in the Middle East at the 2014 SPE Asset Integrity Workshop entitled “Changing the Culture, Raising the Bar” held on 13-14 May in Abu Dhabi. "It is a great honor and a privilege to have been given this SPE award for the best ‘Company Contribution to Asset Integrity in the Middle East’. Asset integrity is in the DNA of DNV GL, and this award is proof of our Middle East team’s dedication to integrity excellence” said Moss Daemi, DNV GL’s Divisional Director for Middle East, North Africa and India. With the objective of “raising the bar” in asset integrity management in the Middle East…

Oil and gas asset integrity and corrosion management firm LUX Assure said it has made strides in developing a presence in the U.S. by establishing a sales and service agreement with Houston-based Brown Corrosion Services Inc. Brown Corrosion Services will be handling the business development of LUX Assure’s innovative corrosion management products CoMic and OMMICA, and handling the deployment of CoMic in the U.S.. LUX Assure will be exhibiting alongside Brown Corrosion Services at the upcoming NACE Corrosion 2014 conference in San Antonio, Texas on stand 1827 from March 9-13.

Moving MOUs to sheltered waters or drydock facilities for surveys is disruptive and expensive. Using the experience gained from several years of dealing with floating production units and surveying drilling units on location, DNV is now preparing a Recommended Practice (RP) to allow mobile offshore units to operate on location by optimizing survey routines without compromising on quality, safety and integrity. More practical design and construction of the units, established condition monitoring technologies, effective corrosion management programs, emerging technologies for less intrusive or alternative means of inspections, ingenious maintenance and continuous survey regimes are some of the elements that make this change possible.

Participants at a workshop exploring the use of titanium structure for ships found that it is not only possible to construct a ship hull from titanium—or Ti, it could be cost effective. The workshop was sponsored by the Office of Naval Research and hosted by the University of New Orleans, where an ONR research program on titanium ship structures is being conducted. Representatives of the shipbuilding industry, titanium suppliers, Navy, Coast Guard and Air Force labs, and academia discussed and examined materials, processes and applications. Most ships today are primarily made from steel.

Austal USA and their U.S. Navy partners have worked closely to achieve a comprehensive corrosion management solution for the Independence-variant Littoral Combat Ship (LCS) class. Impressed current cathodic protection systems, already in place on the Westpac Express, an Austal-built civilian vessel that has served the U.S. Marine Corps for the past decade, are set to be tested over the coming months on the Independence-variant Littoral Combat Ships and ultimately, put into place on the Jackson (LCS 6). Passive measures are important as well, and the Coronado (LCS 4) will get new anti-corrosion surface treatments to better protect the water jet tunnels and associated structure from galvanic corrosion.

NACE International, The Corrosion Society, has released details for the upcoming Corrosion 2010 Conference & Expo, the world’s largest annual conference dedicated to mitigating the costly global impact of corrosion. Recently, the annual cost of corrosion of the world’s critical infrastructure was found to be over $1.8t by the World Corrosion Organization. The annual event will take place in San Antonio, Texas, March 14 to 18, 2010 and will deliver a comprehensive array of meetings and symposia across a broad spectrum of industries. Corrosion 2010 will bring together more than 5,000 corrosion industry leaders, executives, and decision makers for workshops, forums, and events.

InterCorr International, the Houston-based corrosion engineering and technology company, was granted a new patent (US Application 09/202193) for "Assessment of Corrosion." The patent covers various aspects of corrosion assessment, the most fascinating of which includes the ability to automatically determine the corrosion mechanism without the need to rip open the pipe or vessel for inspection. Kenneth MacKenzie, Chairman of InterCorr, said, "Certainly the greatest challenge to industry in overcoming corrosion is to detect that there is a problem well in advance of a material failure. In most cases of pressure equipment, it can be too late even if corrosion is observed and patched during a turnaround inspection - equipment replacement is then inevitable, and costly.

Houston’s InterCorr International, a corrosion engineering and technology company, is working to introduce a new corrosion management technology. The company reports that a new patent has been granted (US Application 09/202193) to InterCorr for “Assessment of Corrosion.” The patent covers various aspects of corrosion assessment, the most fascinating of which includes the ability to automatically determine the corrosion mechanism without the need to rip open the pipe or vessel for inspection. Elements of the new technology are incorporated within InterCorr’s latest corrosion monitoring product, SmartCETTM.