Tata Tanjung Tamara

A10703013

Green Ocean Engineering, Opportunities and Challenges

Speaker: Grant Wang (FerMo Corp.)

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Depends on Green Technologies and Environment course last week, we known
about offshore platform, onshore platform, corossion include opportunities and
challenges. We known that energy is a thing that cannot be separated from human life.
All human activities on a household scale and industrial scale, of course require energy.
In the future, most of the energy used is obtained from burning of fossil fuels. Thus, the
oil and gas industries are fairly important industry in the world. Mr. Wang explain us
about processes for oil and gas exploitation as shown Figure 1. There are 2 platforms.
That is offshore platform and onshore platform. Nevertheless, currently the exploitation
process offshore platforms is still rare. This is due to the difficulty of development and
maintenance of offshore platforms. Thus, it is considered less economical compared to
onshore platforms. The main problem that occurs quite often on the offshore platform is
the occurrence of corrosion due to contact between the platform with air and sea water,
especially in the splash. This zone is calculated from areas where the structure is
submerged in seawater during the highest tide up to the submerged area at the lowest
tide. Between the platform and sea water. For this reason, it is necessary to have an
economical and effective protection platform from corrosion.

Figure 1. Oil and Gas Facilities[1]

Corrosion is a natural process, which converts a refined metal to a more

chemically-stable form, such as its oxide, hydroxide, or sulfide. It is the gradual
destruction of materials (usually metals) by chemical and/or electrochemical reaction
with their environment. Corrosion engineering is the field dedicated to controlling and
stopping corrosion [2]. The most difficult corrosion control is control of structures
located in corrosive environments such as the sea. On exploitation offshore the structure
will continue to be exposed to a corrosive environment. Offshore oil rigs are one of the
important oil exploitation structures in production, but corrosion of oil rigs must be done
properly so as not to cause harm or loss. The most difficult corrosion control on an
offshore oil rig is in the splash zone. Where corrosion occurs very quickly and needs
protection. The control corrosion in the splash zone that can be used is by using coatings
using special materials such as Zn-Al and Ni-Cu alloys, but this method has disadvantages.
The use of coatings requires more expensive costs because it requires special treatments
such as surface cleaning which will also cost more. The use of coatings also cannot be
applied to structures that have been installed and need to be repaired. Therefore, cheaper
and more efficient corrosion control technology is needed. One alternative solution for
corrosion control is Cathodic Protection. It is a technique used to control corrosion of
metals by making the metal surface as a cathode of electrochemical cells. Cathodic
protection (CP) is a technique used to control the corrosion of a metal surface by making
it the cathode of an electrochemical cell [3]. A simple method of protection connects the
metal to be protected to a more easily corroded "sacrificial metal" to act as the anode. The
sacrificial metal then corrodes instead of the protected metal. For structures such as
long pipelines, where passive galvanic cathodic protection is not adequate, an external
DC electrical power source is used to provide sufficient current. Based on the electricity
source, Cathodic Protection is divided into two methods, namely: 1) Sacrificial Anode
System, this method is called sacrificial anode because the system sacrifices more
reactive metal (anode) to protect the main metal (cathode). The principle of this method
is to create electrochemical cells where two different metals are electrically connected
which are planted in natural electrolytes, such as: soil or water, and 2) Impressed-Current
Cathodic Protection (ICCP) System. This method requires a DC electric current
(unidirectional) from an outside source connected to an anode metal with a cathode
metal (protected metal). This ICCP anode system can take the form of tubular bars of
various special materials. Such as: high silicon cast iron, graphite, a mixture of metal
oxide, platinum and niobium. This method is usually used to protect large facilities. The
ICCP method must be connected to a DC electric current, if the electric current is AC it
must be connected to a rectifier because the function of this DC power source is to direct
the oxidized electrons from the anode to the protected metal so that the metal is not easily
oxidized (corrosion) because of losing electrons.

References:
[1] “Oil and gas production handbook An introduction to oil and gas production,
transport, refining and petrochemical industry.” .
[2] Wikipedia, “Corrosion.” [Online]. Available:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Corrosion. [Accessed: 13-Nov-2018].
[3] “Cathodic Protection.” [Online]. Available:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cathodic_protection. [Accessed: 13-Nov-2018].