Find here some important lessons learned from design thru to execution and life extension, this is still a WIP, and ultimately will share more recent lessons and predictions from other SME's too!
1. In each of Binders career experiences he has observed, witnessed, and helped resolve pertinent often critical engineering issues. Some of these are narrated, for all the key is to listen and observe what the client wants, and try arrive at a solution together rather than win- lose, lose win, or even win-win the latter can be a pretend solution that just fizzles out to zero.
2. Encourage Young engineers to probe & inquire, even if they have you on the ropes; quite often they have the answer, but just don't know it yet!
3. Be prepared to modify the design (MOC) especially with respect to adding corrosion, materials and IM criteria; such as pre-corrosion assessment, storage procedures with KPI's. Refer the Picture Gallery and Action Stations montage, see if you can match the pics to lessons learned? Most often your best port of call is the Engineering Manager, then the Project Manager for obvious reasons!
4. Documentation, documentation, documentation! If its not recorded it didn't happen! This is a center piece of the so called safety cases, especially when considering MOC per localized corrosion mechanisms and cracking threats, at weak links such as flanges, weldments, and specification breaks.
5. Safety, safety, safety! BSEE (USA) now infer that the Stop Work Authority (SWA) applies to all including designers (!) Reference: Ocean Energy Safety Institute (OESI) Q&A session at TAP Forum, Doubletree hotel, at JFK Blvd, Houston, 17th Feb, 2017.
6. Engage the proper disciplined engineers or scientists, ensure the checkers are of equal or greater standing, and that the approver understands the recommendations. Allow a sign off page for all decision makers - this is invaluable if/when future disagreements surface. And multiple authorships proving valuable in controversial topic areas.
7. Examine carefully all likely excursions, corrosion and materials performance is often stimulated during transients, upsets or pressure/temperature/Velocity/Stress (PTVσ) values breeching the design or operating envelope. we may refer this as CUE (corrosion under excursions), see the Heat exchanger tubing failure example in photo gallery.
8. Excursions even of the order of a few hrs can breakdown passive films and/or lower critical pitting potentials on the polarization 'fingerprinting' plots. This is usually thought pertinent to the CRA's only; but the principles apply to carbon steels too, especially with pre-corrosion, and pre-filming albeit with some careful interpretation. ( See Publications page Binder's RNEC paper ca 1988).
9. My colleague Ben Poblete came out with what I thought was a brilliant illustration for best practice ROI; but understand process only works if there is a constructive stage gate at every step- see OTC 2009 paper available (Linkedin) and Picture Gallery.
10.Watch out for occluded corrosion cell geometries such as for dead legs, design and operational (intended and not). MIC is often the main culprit wherever stagnant water phase wetting is prevalent. This can be for micro and macro corrosion cells. Fluctuating velocities and localized eddies can also be the scourge of both internal and external corrosion.
11. Beware the Steel Catenary Riser (SCR) touch down zones where multiple accelerated degradation mechanisms can occur (internal erosion and corrosion, plus CP failure under shielding) from outside nasty combination! quite feasible). Similar combinations of external/internal corrosion mechanisms have also been violently observed with onshore pipelines.
12. Hidden stagnation zones such as within the soft tank of a typical Spar - here the soft tank is often filled with 'magnetite oxides' for ballast (with or without anodes) the noble magnetite can stimulate galvanic corrosion pitting of the steel (thick wall but susceptible in the long run) with anticipated potential differences beyond 300 mV in play. These are classic 'swiss cheese effects' waiting to happen refer OTC Piper Alpha paper-Abstracts page. Therefore must always monitor such zones carefully, recommended especially in the last quarter of the asset life. Inspection is complex but feasible.
13. The use of sacrificial anodes in confined spaces and occluded cells should be treated with care to avoid low and high pH scenarios from developing and causing adverse amphoteric aluminum or zinc anode behaviors. Similarly much evidence now accumulated per unusual CP failures and pitting corrosion within offshore wind, monopile stagnation cavities.
14. The continual training and experience growth of corrosion, integrity, and materials engineers must be treated with far more rigor at all career stages, allowing for technical excellence, human factors, ergonomics, health, safety, environment, ethics, cultural and lifelong management development.
15. Recent interactive sessions with SME’s across the board has revealed the hidden often latent relationships between corrosion, materials degradation, SCC and mechanical engineering within the disciplines of Process Safety and HSEQ. In many cases over 90% of process safety issues can be relayed back to “corrosion and metallic” issues!
16. Invited engagements 2020/21 with ASTM Committees per Revision of important standards - Including creation of Appendices re Lessons Learned (LL). Anticipate publication e/o 2021.
Latest Nuggets : Invited and to be incorporated.