One of the current and important challenges faced by cathodic protection professionals is to
access the corrosion probability of cathodically protected buried pipes subject to alternating
current (AC) interference (i.e., AC corrosion). In practice, it is very common for cathodically
protected pipes to be buried adjacent high voltage AC electrical power lines and electric
energy distribution systems. These electric power systems can produce stray AC current in
soil or induced AC current in the pipe. This AC current can cause severe corrosion on
buried pipes which are supposed to be catholically protected. There are several criteria
cited by the literature to evaluate the probability of AC corrosion; however, they are
inefficient since failures due to AC corrosion have been reported on pipelines which
displayed electric and electrochemical parameters within the acceptable limits of those
criteria. This work has as an objective to propose a new thermodynamic criterion and
presents all the necessary equipment for obtaining in the field the necessary electric and
electrochemical parameters to apply the proposed criterion in a safe way. Those
parameters are obtained from the waveform of pipe-soil interface AC+DC off potential. Two
devices were developed: a probe composed of a modified permanent Cu/CuSO4 reference
electrode coupled with corrosion coupons and an electronic alternating switch device.
Some measurements conducted on existing pipelines are also presented.
Keywords: cathodic protection, AC current, AC corrosion