L51715 Field Testing the Criteria for Cathodic Protection of Buried Pipelines

Abstract

There are three (3) documented Cathodic Protection (CP) criteria included in the NACE standards. The appropriate use of these are often debated and sometimes thought to be conservative in dry soils and possibly insufficient in some wet soil conditions. The need exists to evaluate the risks of an improperly installed and/or maintained CP system. The criteria for cathodic protection have been the subject of various research projects conducted for the Pipeline Research Council International, Inc. (PRCI) over a number of years. The programs have responded to the need to establish whether the present criteria are adequate or inadequate, and under what conditions, and whether the specific requirements for protection may depend upon the particular soil environment. The results of this study provide a comprehensive overview of the technical literature and the laboratory studies that formed the basis for this work. The results of this work include the first systematic study of the criteria as installed in the field. Field studies were initiated in 1984 with a multiyear (thru 1994) plan and objective of verifying the requirements for protection in a variety of natural environments, some of which were studied in the earlier laboratory research. Part I: Results of the research.Part II: Applications to the study, the limitations, methods of determining requirements of the pipeline, and the measurements needed to implement the results (60 figures and 56 tables).Part III: Study data (100 pages of charts and tables)