Simultaneous Corrosion and Fouling Monitoring Under Heat Transfer in Cooling Water Systems

Corrosion and fouling in cooling water systems can potentially reduce heat-transfer capability, increase maintenance costs, reduce plant availability, and contaminate process lines. Conventional monitoring systems have measured corrosion and fouling separately. Fouling monitors alone are not able to indicate real-time corrosion activity beneath surface deposits. Traditionally, corrosion information has been derived from destructive evaluation of heat exchanger tubes, weight loss coupons, and probes under nonheat flux conditions. To overcome these shortcomings, a monitoring system has been developed that measures corrosion and fouling simultaneously. By using electrochemical noise measurement technology, the system is particularly sensitive to detecting localized corrosion beneath a fouled surface, a major and frequent mode of corrosion failure in heat exchangers. Development of the system has progressed from field trials with a prototype unit to a commercially available system. This paper reports and discusses the most recent evaluation of the system at Amoco's Corporate Research facility in Naperville, Illinois, focusing on the sensitivity of electrochemical noise measurement in detecting localized corrosion (pitting and so forth) on a heat transfer surface in a cooling water environment.