Industry articles

As this very first article, it seems fitting to start at the beginnings of CICS - Corrosion & Integrity Consulting Services. The conducted LinkedIn poll choices are restricted to 30 characters and therefore quite limiting for article titles. A full title could have been: 'Why Christiane ended up going through the exercise of founding a company to do what she has been doing for a while.' My reasoning, after a summer of contemplation, now seems simple to me, but certainly was an interesting process that I am very happy to share.

Let’s start by telling you where I come from. No, I’m not referring to Austria. Although many of you have noticed my accent and most of you already know that I was born and raised in that tiny, mountainous country across the ocean; I am actually referring to my education and employment history.

My first job after grad school in Chemical Engineering was a full-time assignment in a refinery’s pilot plant laboratory to conduct my PhD project’s research and process implementation- a true deep dive into plant design and project coordination. ‘Chemical feedstock recycling of polyolefins’ was the tempting working title of my thesis, or as it is better known today: ‘ReOil’. From a first concept study, and discontinuous bulb reactor trials, to designing a continuous plant. Of course, on a pilot plant scale and oh so much trickier with a small-scale reactor of a temperamental process such as thermal cracking that mostly depends on retention time for its product output. Oh, did we learn with this little plant. The learning process was fast-tracked and streamlined, thanks to great in-house expert resources and the tremendous support from consultants and equipment vendors.

I am proud to say, not only was I able to complete my thesis and to graduate because we produced significant results that satisfied the required ‘levels of novelty’ for a doctorate - Today, ReOil is considered to be the next step to a circular economy for plastics, namely polyolefins. Interested in learning more? Please drop me a note and I will publish a future article on that subject!

What does plastics recycling have to do with corrosion and integrity, you may ask. I do promise we will get there. This very first project was my first ‘sniff’ into refineries and downstream oil and gas. To specify which process conditions to implement in the pilot plant, the process’s final product output selection was essential. Learning which products are produced and maximized in a modern refinery for today’s fuel and petrochemical market, was the required knowledge to be gained for the overall process selection and implementation. This little pilot plant gave me the chance to see the much bigger picture of an oil refinery and its processes. It is a truly fascinating industry that will never leave me bored; and, certainly, when one first experiences the intricacies and complexity of a variable feedstock such as crude oil into a refinery. While desired product output and refinery margin optimization is the one set of variables, supply is the other side of this complex equation. Crude diets are subject to ever changing supply scenarios, often interlaced with geopolitical challenges and opportunities. While maximizing our refineries’ theoretical economic output, we are quickly reminded how detrimental downtime can affect the overall bottom line. Unscheduled outages make so-called ‘opportunity crudes’ quickly unfavorable when not carefully evaluated. In our plastics waste recycling scenario as alternative feedstock, we quickly pinpointed PVC contaminations as an asset threatening component. Hydrochloric acid forms readily in the thermal cracking process from PVC in a hydrogen-rich environment, we came to find out and challenged the integrity of product distillation units and product circuits. Unfortunately, when processing a waste stream, contaminations can be minimized but never fully avoided. Costly, but effective, corrosion mitigation strategies can be unit material upgrades or cladding.

Fortunately, the in-depth lecture plans at my alma mater educated us well beyond chemical process design and equipped us with knowledge and interest in materials selection for plant asset integrity. Nestled in an established mining and steel manufacturing region of Austria, the Montanuniversität or University of Leoben has a strong emphasis on materials, mining and metallurgy. Every process and plant design lecture would inevitably end up in the question: “And which material do we pick and what corrosion mechanism do we need to be aware of? Let’s sketch up the Iron-Carbon Phase Diagram.” We ‘Montanists’, our university’s students’ nickname, are primed to stay close to corrosion and its mitigation.

It was this passion for materials and corrosion combined with refining that sparked my interest in joining the, at the time, small start-up and Imperial College technology spin-off, Permasense. Ultrasonic wall thickness measurements are one of the foundations in assessing a manufacturing plant’s integrity. Paired with wireless technology, any accessibility challenges can be alleviated for these often hard-to-reach corrosion condition monitoring locations or #CMLs in elevated locations. It turns into a true #IIoT device with the powerful analytics engine for waveform processing. But let me not get off-track again telling you CICS’ story! We will find out more about the industries’ fast paced product and software developments in my next articles.

Enabling this groundbreaking product to be provided successfully with application-based marketing materials, brought me from a research environment into a science-driven business development field. I will always remember how it took Kevin Clarke less than 5 minutes to convince me not only on the industry-changing novelty of this innovative product but also to encourage me to switch my personal career focus.

This first and many other interactions helped me see how science-backed business development is the necessary step for market adoption and application integration of novel products. Without dedicated business development and sales teams, technology and product adoption would be dramatically slower and even up to a lucky of stumbling into the right aisle of a conference to find out about a product novelty. Former NACE, now AMPP, is doing an amazing job to connect us in the corrosion and integrity industry to the appropriate peers but imagine when this first connection to a peer network like AMPP is not made yet.

In technical sales, we pride ourselves not only to bring novel technologies to the industry and into new applications but also to provide application knowledge with it. Be the trusted advisor for application and market adoption! On the other hand, with my original pilot plant design experience, I saw the necessity and requirement for independent but also vendor-based support to optimize a complex process and not rely on trial-and-error approaches in novel application fields. It’s the educated decisions we make that streamline our #innovation and design adoption process.

If you are facing #corrosion- and #integrity- related challenges for #productapplication or #marketadoption, please feel free to reach out to me.

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Approximately one month into the exciting journey of CICS, it is time for our second read.

The question of which predictive corrosion tools to use, has been a debate between engineers and scientists for many years if not decades. And I will share my opinion openly: I root for both solutions simultaneously as they complement each other, creating a different approach to our journey of material selection and asset integrity. Yes, I have promoted the one side - real-time monitoring and measurements - exclusively in the recent past and I will dive into its reasoning and the why. I have had the pleasure of also working with simulations and have seen their immediate impact and benefit throughout all project stages.

While real time monitoring is a tool I like to rely on, it unfortunately comes with one drawback: a delay in delivering the information in question. A plant will have to be built, devices have to be installed and the unit has to be started up and run to experience the real-time effect of corrosion.

The tremendous upside of simulations is having an ‘advance notice’ how well a process will work and ultimately in this forum’s context, how corrosive it will be. It is an essential tool when planning and configuring a process unit and performing its material selection.

I had the pleasure to simulate energy optimization measures in a running refinery as my very first project. We simulated if rerouting an FCC’s (fluid catalytic cracker’s) pump around to a feed preheat section would be economically feasible. It is a marvelous tool to envision if, before touching a piece of pipe, this measure could be physically implemented and if would pay off financially and make this refinery more energy efficient.

Back to corrosion, there are a few, very smart individuals and companies in our industry offering, for example, to simulate changes in crude slates and how they affect an already built refinery unit. I had the pleasure of running into Frank Sapienza along my journey and recently learned about his involvement in simulating opportunity crudes, specifically the effect of naphthenic acids and reactive organic sulfur compounds. Amazing to hear how we can predict the process equipment’s impact before we initiate changes to a refinery’s crude diet. And how we can overlay these findings with defined integrity operating windows, #IOWs. Simulations are a tremendous tool to foresee the expected challenges and to plan for asset integrity and corrosion mitigation strategies. Temporary, such as modifying process conditions or dosing corrosion inhibitors and permanent measures, such as process unit modifications and material upgrades.

That being said, we ought to be aware of our limitations. As a complex system of competing chemical reactions, we need to estimate and assume certain physical factors and variables.

For example, naphthenic acid corrosion being highly dependent on shear: The large hydrocarbon chain and rings tend cover the active acid center, like a strand of wool. Until there is a sudden shift in process flow directions and impact is triggered into the potentially vulnerable metal pipe or equipment surface. Now, can I correct for this occurrence in a model? Of course. If I have reasoning to predict it. From anecdotal experience and knowledge gained from failure analyses, many failure scenarios were not predicted. Nobody expects an injection pump to fail or the attached injection quill to be bent into the wrong direction after a recent turnaround. The corrosion devil is in the plant detail!

This is where easily commissionable non-intrusive, real-time corrosion monitoring devices can help in case of an emerging asset integrity challenge. We can identify and evaluate remaining service life and process changes that are implemented to mitigate a failure.

And as a trained engineer, I will acknowledge: I am an empiricist. According to Oxford’s dictionary, an empiricist is a person who supports the theory that all knowledge is based on experience derived from the senses. "Most scientists are empiricists by nature."

This mindset leads me to believe that a process unit will always profit from installing corrosion monitoring equipment, even on new-builds, designed to a current crude slate and predicted failure mechanisms. Watch corrosion as it occurs before we are challenged by equipment end-of-life scenarios or even failures and their consequences. And crude slates are going to change with supply and product demand scenarios, so why not have a system already installed and therefore a corrosion baseline established?

If you were hoping to have a winner of one tool over the other, my apologies. In soccer, they would call it a draw!

Overall, in a perfect engineering world we will combine the two discussed tools. We benefit most from initially predicting asset challenges and later verifying these predictions with accurate integrity data. #predictivemaintenance #realtimemonitoring

Integrity love and pain points

This topic is intended to not only produce an entertaining while technical article, but also to spark a conversation about our field of work. Please participate and share your love and pain points of integrity in the LinkedIn comment section: https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/integrity-love-pain-points-cics-integrity

My love and pain points of corrosion often go hand in hand.

Let me start with our pain points. In the integrity and corrosion mitigation space, we are worried about the aggressive and fast deteriorating conditions in industrial processing, specifically with process changes and unexpected increases in corrosion rates and additional corrosion mechanisms.

Please bear in mind my chemical engineering background, when I say: it is fascinating to see how the well formulated additive can protect upstream and midstream assets in low-temperature environments. A true love point. The integrity nightmare, or the pain point, arises when this process stream is heated to be processed in a refinery. It may turn your well-designed plant upside down and deteriorate even upgraded columns and reactors overheads with amine crusts. Yes, I am speaking about #H2Sscavengers. Dosed to protect assets like rail cars and pipelines when connecting oil fields to product refining facilities, it is that same amine causing havoc in refining units. Sometimes referred to as tramp amines, they form stable salt crusts with chlorides in fractionation overhead systems. When controlling corrosion and unit pH with amines, monitoring of amine concentrations is of the essence to avoid the formation of amine chloride depositions and the subsequent under-deposit corrosion.

Under-deposit corrosion is one of the fastest advancing corrosion mechanisms. But why? Chemical engineering hearts start beating faster, it is a close-to fully isolated corrosion cell.

Residence time of the trapped liquid is far longer while the deposit itself has a different chemical composition than the remaining process stream. Inside the depleting galvanic cell, the pH drops and the attack is accelerated by the acidic environment. If not detected, these corrosion scenarios can cause unplanned shutdowns within weeks if not days.

There are many tools in our toolbox to facilitate the mentioned process monitoring and in addition #corrosionmonitoring. Let’s have a conversation about your choices, I am happy to help!

Many informative documents and presentations have been published around failure mechanisms after industry incidents. They are the core of #CSB reports, presentation topics of industry conferences such as #AMPP and former #NACE corrosion courses. For example, how polyphonic acid can cause widespread cracking noticed at a refinery startup. As mentioned earlier, how amine salt crusts build a nearly perfect corrosion cell by shielding it from the process stream and how a pH can drop that aggressively. And how the report of a Texas refinery explosion still sends chills down our spines and how Murphy's law seems to have been at play leading up to the incident and costing 15 lives.

But it's these events that activate our community, delivering improved guidelines. These are my love points in integrity work. How personnel in routine activities outside the field and office buildings are now physically removed from hazardous processing areas.

Our community works together for the greater good of safety and technological advancement. It's when operating and supply companies meet, competitors come together to help improve the state of the art and to create novel solutions. Being part of standards committee meetings, we are thankful for all the hard work provided on a voluntary basis.

If you like this article, please take the time to #comment and #share! What are your love and pain point examples?

Founding challenges and tools

57 percent would like to hear about my founding challenges and how I was able to overcome them – I am so excited to share! First, I want to say a huge ‘thank you’ to those who made this endeavor successful and also to encourage you readers to try out something you always wanted to tackle. Because truthfully, taking the jump from being employed into solo entrepreneurship can be challenging at times or even scary.

But just over 12 months into my exciting journey of founding a company, I can say for myself: it feels incredibly good to overcome a challenge. Next to the excitement for a successful volunteering endeavor like AMPP’s Eastern conference or after a tough and complex job was well done, it may be my favorite moments. Corrosion challenges and their effective mitigation are my happy place. Setting up a website not so much.

But before I dive into my specific issues, let me say: there is always help. Being a stubborn person, I must remind myself often that there is help and how it is sometimes in everyone’s best interest to let experts help you.

It was a beautiful Friday late afternoon in early October of last year and I had the special treat of hosting my one and only amazing sister @Eva-Maria Lederer from overseas. She was traveling through on a business trip to her North American office, and we had the wonderful chance to catch up in person.

I had just started looking into different options of incorporation as a solo consulting business. My sister’s professional background in commercial law helped greatly and just as helpful was her important nudge: ‘You can’t be the first one having these questions. How about we search online for help.’ And sure enough, within a few minutes we found SCORE. I met with my mentor @Michael Disbrow over the phone only a few days later. Within an hour, I had a list of tasks to check off and guidance how to do each and every one of them. Michael gave me the confidence to execute my loose strategies because I had a second opinion.

This is one of the biggest challenges to date for me. I liked running new ideas by coworkers first for a brief sound check. Who do you ask when you work for yourself and by yourself? Again, online resources can come in handy here, for example online forums for #solopreneurs to get opinions. I have yet to find my little niche though. Technical marketing is an interesting intersection because it isn’t quite marketing. I have found most success close to Academia and organizations like AMPP, former NACE. Meanwhile, I have also taken on responsibilities as the secretary for our AMPP Georgia chapter. Our meetings are a breath of fresh air for me, interacting with wonderful people in our industry every month and getting to organize conferences and courses like the SE Corrosion Short Course.

Besides amazing mentorship, SCORE also delivers outstanding webinars every week on many areas of interest and education. Nancy Cleveland’s ‘Small Business Certification Programs and Certify SBA.GOV’ was amazing. Yes, you should absolutely get certified as a small business. I encourage you to listen to Nancy’s talk or feel free to reach out to me.

And I mentioned my issues with websites? Yes, there are many templates and companies to set up and host websites for you. But sometimes these templates don’t fit your business orientation. I went the route of building my own: www.cicsintegrity.com - It was surprisingly easy with Google sites. My Gmail hosted email address reserved my domain for very little and the basic Gmail services already gave me access to Google sites. Particularly helpful was @DemmingBass’s SCORE presentation ‘Make Your Website Work For You’ - on SEO (Search Engine Optimization) or how to rank higher in search engines. Did you know, your website will appear higher in search results when you make regular small changes to it?

My key takeaway of things I hadn’t considered but definitely needed to:

Have a website. Thank you @MichaelDisbrow! Your clients may not be attracted to your business by your website because your business development is through different instruments. But their purchasing department or even the insurance underwriter needs to see one to verify your business.

And: Embrace the challenge. Building something allows you to deliver your take on solutions for industry issues. And there will always be a new challenge after the last one is completed. You will never be bored again!

Thank you so much for reading. I hope you have a wonderful day!