Recent advances in processing of data from continuous corrosion monitoring systems that delivers insights into corrosion events in the crude unit caused by changing sulphur content crudes at a European refinery are discussed.

A European refiner has installed several hundred wireless wall-thickness monitoring sensors in their crude and vacuum distillation units. This system delivers the continuous wall thickness measurements to the corrosion engineer’s desk so that corrosion events are detected and monitored in real time while the process units are in operation.

Recent advances in processing, visualisation, and analysis of the data delivered by the corrosion monitoring system have afforded previously unavailable insights into when, where, and why corrosion has occurred in the refinery’s process units. In particular, the additional insights delivered have enabled this refiner to correlate very small changes to the internal surface condition – the onset of corrosion, as detected by the system using the Signal Shape Indicator - against small changes in the sulphur content of the crude diet.

This extra level of sensitivity, beyond the already huge leap in data quality and frequency delivered by online wall thickness monitoring, is made possible only through advanced automated processing of the recorded ultrasonic signals that are recorded by the online corrosion monitoring system. With this unique capability to detect corrosion activity before wall loss even occurs, the refiner is now able to determine the corrosion risk associated with different crudes long before any undesirable consequences of associated corrosion events occur.

Key words: Conference Papers, 2017 Conference papers, Corrosion, corrosion inhibition, monitoring, online monitoring, continuous monitoring