The primary application area for above ground coating evaluation (AGCES) methods is for unpiggable pipelines. For several reasons, however, AGCES methods are not necessarily limited along these narrow lines. For instance, most ILI tools are incapable of identifying external corrosion (which resulted from coating damage overtime) until the wall loss damage has reached the measurable detection threshold of the ILI tool. Thus, even for piggable pipelines, AGCES methods still come in handy for pipeline integrity. In fact, the most proactive approach for pipeline corrosion integrity management for ...
The primary application area for above ground coating evaluation (AGCES) methods is for unpiggable pipelines. For several reasons, however, AGCES methods are not necessarily limited along these narrow lines. For instance, most ILI tools are incapable of identifying external corrosion (which resulted from coating damage overtime) until the wall loss damage has reached the measurable detection threshold of the ILI tool. Thus, even for piggable pipelines, AGCES methods still come in handy for pipeline integrity. In fact, the most proactive approach for pipeline corrosion integrity management for the future will include complementary surveys, such as ECDA and ICDA, all super-imposed and integrated on a common GIS framework for comparative and comprehensive data analysis. Within the pipeline industry there exist divergent views about the AGCES methods, their principles of operation, and limitations. An important defining point about AGCES methods is simple this: they are indirect inspection methods for identifying and classifying external coating damage; they are not – and should not be – tied to the functionalities of any specific proprietary tools or hardware manufactures. The second statement requires further qualification. Confusion is often created among users of AGCES methods when the names of certain coating survey tool are interchanged with the specific survey methods in question. For instance, company A manufactures a device C for detecting coating anomalies. The tendency within the industry is to call the coating survey method such names as “C Survey” or “C Coating Survey”. The problem created in this instance is to limit AGCES methods to what device C can capture; the quality of the data become handicapped by that of device C. Industry standards have been created to avoid the fore-going pitfalls. Hence, rather than limit survey methods to the specifications of a given proprietary tool, attempts should be made to manufacture and design tools to meet industry standards. The result will be uniformity of methodology, the only distinctions being speed of data acquisition, methods of data analysis, and possibly, other subtle differences in technological advancements. Included in this distinction is the use of analog versus digital data acquisition methods. Of course, all that has been described so far assumes that the industry standards referenced captures all the details of an effective coating evaluation survey method, including known and even perceived limitations.