Abstract

Corrosion protection of large equipment’s internal surfaces (distillation towers, pipelines, tanks, boilers, heat exchangers, etc.) during storage, transportation/shipping and long term mothballing (up to 10 years) is a worldwide problem1-18. In many cases, well-known technology for replacement of the environment with nitrogen gases cannot be applied and is not always efficient enough. In addition to their limited protection ability, this approach can be cumbersome, complicated, labor intensive, very expensive and create safety issues. This paper describes a system that reduces the environment corrosiveness by decreasing the relative humidity (RH) to a level that allows achieving corrosion protection of different metals in any sealed enclosure. In addition, this new system delivers the volatile corrosion inhibitors (VCI) into enclosures that increases the corrosion protection efficiency and decreases the corrosion if the enclosures have some leakage. This system quickly creates the required RH and concentration of VCI. The equipment and can be easily moved for applying corrosion protection in different locations. This paper will present a mobile system that can be used for many kinds of equipment in different facilities. Application experience of a system that was utilized to provide corrosion protection of mothballed equipment in a refinery will be presented.

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