Corrosion is a cannibalistic force that usually attacks chemical process equipment from the inside out. That must be why it is often referred to as a hidden cost, because the economic impact of corrosion is becoming impossible to overlook.
As Russell D. Kane, director of corrosion services for Honeywell Process Solutions (Phoenix, Ariz.; www.honeywell.com) points out, the price of corrosion reveal itself in a number of ways:
The annual cost of corrosion in the U.S. is estimated to be about $300 billion (about 4% of the gross domestic product)
For the petrochemical and pharmaceutical sectors, the combined annual cost is about $2.5 billion
The annual corrosion cost in the chemical process industries (CPI) is over 10% of the annual plant capital expenditures across these industrial sectors
Globally, the cost of corrosion in the CPI appears to be about $50 billion per year and is projected to climb still higher over the next four years. (That amounts to over 26% of what the American Chemistry Council reports for the chemical industry’s worldwide capital expenditures of $191 billion in 2006)
One reason for the expected rise in CPI corrosion costs is the aging infrastructure at many CPI plants worldwide. Meanwhile, the proliferation of biotechnology adds new challenges. As noted in our Chementator department this month (A bioreactor for extreme conditions, p. 16), the high salt concentrations, extreme pH values and high temperatures required in biotechnological applications causes corrosion in the stainless steel components of common fermenters.
For such a formidable foe, corrosion is surprisingly sparse in the subject matter of most required chemical engineering curricula. And presently, there is been no bachelor’s degree program, in the U.S. at least, for corrosion engineering. That vacancy, however, may soon be filled.
The proposed new corrosion engineering program at the University of Akron (UA; Ohio; www.uakron.edu) is moving closer to development due to $500,000 in funding from the U.S. Dept. of Defense (DOD; Washington; www.dod.gov).
There are many compelling reasons for establishing an undergraduate corrosion engineering degree at UA, especially the opportunities to deliver courses via distance learning technologies, says Dr. George Haritos, dean of the College of Engineering.
"First, there is a national economic imperative for effectively reducing the costs of corrosion to our nation’s public and private entities and infrastructure," Haritos says. "Second, there is a national security mandate to address the impact of corrosion on military assets. Finally, there is a gap in the academic training of engineers who are qualified to address the complex nature of corrosion prevention and mitigation."
To complement this project, funding for a new Corrosion Sciences Laboratory is being explored.
In the meantime, the business of corrosion experts is booming. The National Association of Corrosion Engineers (NACE; Houston; www.nace.org), cites four common methods used in controlling corrosion. They include protective coatings and linings, cathodic protection, materials selection, and corrosion inhibitors. And on an instrumentation and control perspective, progress in corrosion monitoring is opening up new opportunities for prevention.
So while the next few years may very well see corrosion costs moving upward, it appears that help is on the way.
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