Pipeline personnel are routinely asked to evaluate whether excavated corrosion features are active or inactive. To date, no industry guidance has been developed that can be referenced by field personnel when making this assessment. It is recognized that many factors can influence a corrosion status evaluation and that no method, procedure, or process will provide 100% accuracy. The objective of the project was to build a technically defensible set of methods and procedures to classify corrosion features by anomaly type and status as active, inactive or cannot be determined, based on visual inspection...
Pipeline personnel are routinely asked to evaluate whether excavated corrosion features are active or inactive. To date, no industry guidance has been developed that can be referenced by field personnel when making this assessment. It is recognized that many factors can influence a corrosion status evaluation and that no method, procedure, or process will provide 100% accuracy. The objective of the project was to build a technically defensible set of methods and procedures to classify corrosion features by anomaly type and status as active, inactive or cannot be determined, based on visual inspection and relatively simple field tools and equipment. Such procedures will bring consistency to the industry and will greatly benefit efforts to establish re-assessment intervals and improve preventive and mitigative measures based on technical procedures. A field manual that will help field personnel identify different types of corrosion scenarios has been developed.