What is the context? 

On- and off-shore structures are subjected to corrosion due to chemical interaction with the environment (soil, sea water). Cathodic protection systems are installed to protect these structures against the severe environmental and economic consequences of corrosion: mechanical failure, loss of surface properties, contamination of fluids in vessels, hazards and injuries to people, etc.

What are the issues?

Fact is that in many cases the cathodic protection systems are badly designed due to an approach which is based on rule-of-thumbs and on analytical or empirical means. This approach is not capable of modelling the structure in its full complexity, does not take into account crucial data as the polarization behaviour of metal in contact with the soil or sea water, and disregards neighbouring structures and/or activities that can induce severe stray currents. This results in:

• excessive cost of equipment/installation due to over-design: more anodes and transformer rectifier units are installed than needed;
• under-designed cathodic protection systems resulting in insufficient protection and premature degradation of the infrastructure, resulting in serious long term operational costs;
• excessive costs of maintenance in terms of surveys, patch repairs, and associated materials; 
• overall insufficient cathodic protection performance, even in the case of over-designed systems; 
• badly positioned reference electrodes resulting in wrong feedback for self-regulating auto-control units.

What value do we bring?

Elsyca has developed and validated a CAD-based simulation platform that is capable of designing in the virtual space the cathodic protection system for a structure of any given complexity. With this unique technology, Elsyca can provide quantitative information on the cathodic protection levels achieved and the lifetime of the system, thus ruling out the risk of systems not meeting the design goals.

Various Elsyca's application examples can be viewed by clicking here.