Using Ultrasound Measurements for Real-time Process Control of Pipelines and Process Equipment Subjected to Corrosion And/or Erosion

Corrosion and erosion remain two key issues in petroleum production. In the last few years, there has been an increasing demand for online process control where the rate of metal loss may be monitored. From an ultrasound perspective these challenges reduce to measuring the wallthickness over time. By combining permanently installed sensors, low noise measurements and temperature compensation, lab experiments have shown that it is possible to detect changes in wall thickness on the sub-micrometer scale. The results suggest that ultrasound technology is well suited for real-time corrosion monitoring applications, and that it may be used for inhibitor control and optimization as well.