Corrosion Prevention and Metallurgy Manual 1200 CP for Pipelines

installations will usually be adequate. However, test leads at the quarter points as
well as at the midpoint are recommended where feasible.
Test leads should be installed on all lines at cased road and railroad crossings and at
foreign line crossings where interference is likely.
Additional test leads are required if coating conductivity tests are to be made
(see Section 1700).

Voltage Drop in Test Leads

A wire used for current flow (e.g., a drain cable or bond connection) should never
be used as a test lead for pipe-to-soil potential or current-span measurements.
Voltage drop in the wire from a small current flow may be significant compared to
the pipe-to-soil potential, and probably will be large compared to the voltage drop in
a current span. An exception is a drain wire connected to a few galvanic anodes,
whose voltage drop is normally very small compared with the pipe-to-soil potential
of a protected system. Here, it is usually satisfactory to use the drain wire for poten-
tial measurements if a separate potential lead is not available. However, the voltage
drop in the drain wire (on the order of 1 millivolt to 20 millivolts) will be added to
the actual pipe-to-soil potential, indicating better protection than actually exists.
Therefore, a separate potential test lead is recommended.

1220 Current Requirements

1221 Measurements
Coated Lines
On existing pipelines, field tests are desirable to determine the current required for
cathodic protection. For short pipelines, the current required can be determined
directly, as discussed in Section 1700.
The usual procedure for long coated pipelines is to conduct preliminary tests to
determine the coating conductivity of representative sections of the line. These tests
are covered in Section 1700. These tests determine the coating conductivity and
current required for protection, as discussed in Section 1222. Following this prelimi-
nary determination the type of system can be selected (impressed current or
galvanic anode). If a galvanic anode system is to be installed, no further tests are
required until installation of the anodes has started.
For an impressed current system the maximum distance between drain points
(limited by voltage across the coating) can be determined once the coating conduc-
tivity is known. This is covered in Section 1222. As discussed in Section 1230 the
actual drain point spacing is influenced by several other factors. It is normally
considerably less than the theoretical maximum spacing.

Chevron Corporation 1200-11 August 1999