The importance of industrial design in corrosion prevention

Industrial Design

The engineer who designs industrial machinery and equipment plays an important role in reducing the staggering costs of corrosion. A designer must:

1. Be aware of the technical support available to him.
2. Have a sound policy in determining the appropriate materials.
3. Be able to select cost-effectively from a variety of corrosion control methods for the intended application.

Large factories, especially in the oil, gas and petrochemical industries, have engineering groups that have materials at their disposal, and these experienced engineers work directly with designers to reduce corrosion.

Materials engineers have a good understanding of the processes and corrosion problems that exist in manufacturing plants. They rush to the designers to advise on design problems. The designer, who in turn works with the materials engineering expert in solving problems, must have sufficient information about corrosion. The main issue is to prevent corrosion at "design time" and before the plant is built.

The designer should review past experience and then consider safety and economic considerations based on the material's ability to perform the job in question. The most suitable material is not necessarily the most expensive or the cheapest. For example, if all the equipment in a particular application were made of platinum, corrosion problems would be minimal.

 Of course, a plant made of platinum would be very expensive. Design engineers should use the best possible materials for the specific application. The clear concept of optimum is that the material will perform safely and properly at the lowest cost.

Following proper design principles can control corrosion to a great extent. Important points to consider in design include: the possibility of easy replacement of parts exposed to corrosion, the greater use of welding instead of riveting, consideration of the contribution of corrosion (especially uniform specific corrosion), elimination of stress concentration (especially in alloys sensitive to stress cracking), elimination of sharp fluid movement angles (especially at high speeds), uniformity of thermal gradient, avoidance of using metals with high potential differences in connection, prevention of oxygen or substances effective in corrosion to the environment as much as possible, proper design of the discharge system in tanks, elimination of fluid stagnation areas, non-use of porous materials such as wood and asbestos, avoidance of high speeds for fluids, and the possibility of continuous inspection in tanks.

Corrosion control is one of the most important concerns of engineers in an industrial unit. For this reason, some designs are carried out based on corrosion calculations and its control. In the design method based on the corrosion rate, the problems that may arise when using a system related to corrosion will be examined more closely. This method has ten steps, each of which is related to corrosion control in some way. These ten steps are:

Step 1: Determine the environment

Step 2: Determine the materials

Step 3: Determine the initial and secondary conditions

Step 4: Determine the critical states

Step 5: Determine the defects and activity levels

Step 6: Create a statistical model

Step 7: Accelerated tests

Step 8: Predict

Step 9: Monitor, evaluate and feedback

Step 10: Correct

The development of such a method may only partially illustrate the importance of corrosion control. In any case, in industrial units that are becoming larger and more mechanized every day, the cost of repairs and maintenance of equipment is an important factor in their profitability. The parallel development of technologies and skills in these methods is leading to the use of maximum reliability and minimum damage.

In addition, the life of a system depends on its maximum design life, which means that a system cannot operate continuously and forever. The system must be optimized for normal operation and problems, meaning that if the system is damaged by the failure of a component, it must operate in a way that causes the least damage to the operation of the system. For example, it must be easy to replace components that are damaged from time to time.