New Technology Magazine

Permasense Provides Insight Into Benefits Of Continuous Monitoring, Demonstrates Corrosion Monitoring System

The drivers of corrosion and erosion—process conditions, crude constituents and abrasive solids—and the inhibitors to hold corrosion rates in check are familiar, but understanding the levels and rates at which damage may be occurring is an ongoing challenge. Permasense will be providing insight into the benefits of continuous monitoring for upstream applications, and demonstrating how its corrosion monitoring system works.

Permasense will showcase its new long-range corrosion monitoring systemat the Offshore Technology Conference (OTC) in Houston, Texas. The system allows retrieval of data from monitoring locations up to 40 kilometres (25 miles) from the gateway location. Building on the proven technology of the Permasense short-range system, the long-range system has been developed to allow for easy deployment on pipeline and feeder lines upstream and midstream. Again, the system offers an efficient and safe way to monitor the integrity of pipework enabling better informed decision making and improving operator flexibility.

The permanently installed solution that Permasense provides can operate in extreme temperature environments and inaccessible locations. The system combines ultrasonic sensor technology with wireless communication to deliver data of the highest integrity to the end user.

The system has been deployed in refineries and upstream facilities, including offshore platforms, worldwide. To date 12 super-major and privately held oil operators have adopted the system. Proven in continuous operation for over four years in demanding environments at a number of facilities, the Permasense continuous corrosion monitoring systems can be found in the U.S., Canada, Germany, Australia, China and a number of other countries.

Permasense Ltd was born of a research program at Imperial College London, to develop a system, in partnership with BP, for continually monitoring the corrosion of pipes in high temperature and inaccessible environments. A world-leading team of scientists and engineers created a monitoring system that provides reliable, continuous and accurate measurement data in a safe and cost effective manner for the oil and gas refinery and upstream environments. The collaboration with BP informed the functional specification and application space, wireless requirements and data needs, and enabled extensive in-service proving of the system over several years.