Corrosion in pipelines can lead to incidents ranging from evacuation in the event of an explosion to contamination of waterways, serious injuries, and even fatalities.
Operators by law need to protect their pipelines with corrosion monitoring systems. Still, there is often confusion around the differences between monitoring systems and prediction systems and how each works to prevent failure in pipelines.
A pipeline corrosion prediction software in the USA predicts when corrosion will weaken the pipeline structure to give the operator time to act before it becomes critical.
Learn more about this technology with this review of how it works and why pipeline operators should choose this option for their business needs.
What Is Pipeline Corrosion Prediction Software?
Pipelines often run for hundreds of miles, meaning that their structural integrity becomes less specific as they age. With corrosion prediction software, inspectors can identify weak spots in a pipeline before they cause problems. This predictive technology is critical to pipeline operators who want to minimize both safety hazards and equipment costs.
Parameters Considered By This Software
Several factors need to be considered to ascertain whether a pipeline will remain operational for a longer duration. These include wear and tear of a channel, its material composition, geographic location, surrounding climate conditions, etc. The pipeline corrosion prediction software in Canada does all these calculations for you.
However, you must know what its primary considerations are so that you can understand why your pipeline needs maintenance under certain circumstances. For example, if your project happens to be situated in an area where water levels fluctuate often or if your pipeline runs through an industrial belt or near any other form of pollution source, then corrosion may occur even before you expect it to.
What Benefits Does This Software Offer?
The pipeline corrosion prediction software in Canada allows an organization to run various tests on a pipeline to understand what could potentially cause corrosion in their channel. These tests can simulate different temperature, pH, and salt concentration environments that a pipeline might see in its lifetime to determine what could potentially cause corrosion in that specific environment.
After running these tests, models can be created, which can then predict when it will fail based on location.
Using predictions like these, an organization can fix early enough to prevent costly failures later. This software makes much more efficient use of limited human resources by having algorithms do much analytical work rather than actual people who could cause errors. So, it ensures less waste of time and money.
The Bottom Line
When choosing pipeline corrosion prediction software in the USA or Canada, it’s essential to keep several things in mind. For example, how easy is it to use? How easy is it to upgrade (and with whom) when new versions come out? And what kind of warranty/support does it come with?
These are just a few of the many questions that you should address before deciding. However, the most important thing is to know how much money you’re saving with one piece of software versus another. It can be tricky because some programs, particularly those targeted toward large companies, have unlimited licenses at no extra cost.