Corrosion Control in Power Plant Condensers
and Raw Water Cooled Systems

This seminar has been presented to hundreds of engineers, scientists, and technicians.  It is offered on an in-office/on-site basis.  We can accomodate a class size of 25 people.  If all of your personnel cannot attend during a given two day period, the seminar can be conducted twice in a week.  The seminar outline follows:

Six Sessions Totaling 2 Days

The course text is extensive (approximately 400 pages).  It eliminates the need for significant note-taking and provides a very useful corrosion cause and control reference source.  Substantial background information, copies of all relevant technical papers, diagnostic photographs, diagrams, and formulae are provided.  
Note:  All students are furnished with opportunities of free, post-seminar e-mail/telephone consultations with the course director without limitation. All students are also given certificates of completion and active participation in the seminar.

COURSE DESCRIPTION

The seminar is conducted by extensive use of failure type diagnostic slides and actual failed physical specimens to assist in the lecture/discussion format.  It is presented by Corrosion Resolutions’ Senior Corrosion Consultant and is designed for system engineers, material engineers, chemists, metallurgists, and power plant operations/maintenance supervisory personnel.

 This course has been presented numerous times and is exceptionally practical.  It emphasizes problem recognition and methods to formulate and verify the adequacy of system-wide solutions to corrosion problems.  A substantial amount of case histories is provided to highlight the engineering fundamentals involved in corrosion failures and to demonstrate how an understanding of these fundamentals invariably provides the basis for formulating practical corrective action(s).

LEARNING OBJECTIVES

The intent of this seminar is to provide participants with sufficient background and technical information to: 1) recognize all significant forms of aqueous corrosion; 2) understand the basic causes of corrosive attack; 3) become knowledgeable in the methods used to unambiguously verify failure cause and to be capable of correctly interpreting the analytical data; 4) have the ability to specify appropriate corrective actions and to technically prove their adequacy; 5) become familiar with rapid out-of-system and in-situ corrosion monitoring methods/data interpretation; and 6) understand the relevance of all case histories presented.

SEMINAR OUTLINE

SESSION 1 – Electrochemical Principles of Aqueous Corrosion -  The concepts reviewed provide the essential technical background information that is necessary to understand the corrosion failure mechanism concepts and the bases of corrosion control methods which are presented in subsequent seminar sessions.  We realize that some, non-chemically orientated, students might consider this session to be necessary, but burdensome.  For this reason, the selected topics presented in this session do not go beyond the scope of freshman chemistry and the session duration is limited to approximately one hour.

SESSION 2 – Corrosion Mechanisms and Plant Experiences -  All significant forms  of aqueous corrosion which affect condensers and all other raw water cooled system components are discussed in detail.  The presentation format includes: 1) failure cause identification by visual examination; 2) essential diagnostic metallurgical information; 3) definitions of material vulnerabilities to the various forms of corrosion; 4) explicitly defined failure cause mechanisms; and 5) an extensive amount of pertinent plant experience information.

Failure cause topics include, but are not limited to: 1) microbiologically influenced corrosion (MIC); 2) uniform corrosion; 3) numerous pitting mechanisms; 4) crevice corrosion; 5) forms of impingement, cavitation, and erosion-corrosion; 6) galvanic corrosion; 7) condensate grooving; 8) corrosion fatigue; 9) stress corrosion cracking; 10) intergranular corrosion; and 11) dealloying failure mechanisms.

SESSION 3 – Corrosion Detection and Monitoring – The concepts and methods used to quantify the corrosion impact extent and to determine the nature of existing corrosion problems are discussed.  Also discussed are the theory and operation of practical, automated, in-situ corrosion rate monitoring systems and other corrosion monitoring methods/devices.

This session concludes with a dicussion of methods used to custom design and conduct: 1) a corrosion monitoring program – including early warning systems; 2) rapid, in-situ material changeout qualification analyses; 3) corrosion control adequacy verification analyses; and 4) accelerated verification analyses designed to confirm failure cause(s) by experimental reproduction of the incident(s).

SESSION 4 – Root Cause Failure Analysis – Corrosion failure analysis is a rigidly logical process which is used to identify corrosion failure mechanisms and system-wide cause(s)/corrective action(s).  This session explicitly defines that process on a stepwise basis and reinforces all previously discussed corrosion concepts by presentation of an extensive amount of case histories.

Topics that are discussed include: 1) analytical approach planning; 2) use of historical records; 3) chemical and mechanical conformation tests; 4) metallography; 5) scanning electron microscopy (SEM); 6) microbiological tests; and 7) various spectroscopic test methods.

SESSION 5 – Corrosion Control – This aspect of corrosion engineering is discussed in terms of technical-economic evaluations of the following corrosion control options: 1) material changeout; 2) water treatment; 3) coatings; 4) cathodic protection; 5) cleaning/passivation; and 6) combinations of these methods.

Descriptions of all corrosion control  methods and their attributes/limitations are provided.  Thereafter, case histories are used to show the corrosion control interrelationship with all other information presented in previous sessions.

SESSION 6 – Open Forum Workshop – Bring your failed specimens and/or specific plant experiences for analysis and group discussion.

COURSE DIRECTOR

The course director is Mr. Edward F. Conley of Corrosion Resolutions, a power plant/commercial building corrosion consulting firm located in Westford, MA.

Mr. Conley also is a senior corrosion consultant to Heat Exchanger Systems, Inc. of Weymouth, MA.  He has served in that capacity since 1982.  He specializes in: troubleshooting corrosion problems, root cause failure analyses, corrosion monitoring, materials selection, materials changeout analyses, on-site inspections, evaluations and analyses, lay-up procedure development, water treatment investigations and analyses, system/component cleaning/passivation adequacy studies, specification and procedure development, site/shop inspections and surveillance, and development/presentation of corrosion training programs.

During the period of 1972 to 1982, Mr. Conley was employed by Stone & Webster Engineering Corp. as their principal corrosion specialist.  His responsibilities included corrosion consulting, material selection, preparation of materials specifications, analysis of water treatment schemes, performance of corrosion failure analyses, and developing/presenting corrosion training programs.

Mr. Conley has been a principal investigator on several Electric Power Research Institute (EPRI) projects. Pertinent EPRI books either authored or co-authored by him are: High Reliability Condenser Study, TR102922; Recommended Practices for Operating and Maintaining Condensers, CS5235; Study of Service Water System Experiences, RP2183-8;  Service System Sourcebook, RP2495-3; High Reliability Feedwater Heater Study, CS-5856; Manual for Investigation & Correction of Feedwater Heater Failures, GS – 7390; and Nuclear Plant Coatings Research Workshop Transactions.

Mr. Conley is a member of NACE International, formerly called the National Association of Corrosion Engineers.  He has published and presented numerous papers on raw water system corrosion.  He received his B.S. (Honors) in chemistry and bilogy from Northeastern University

If you are interested in this course, please send email to:  CorrosionCourse.

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