Corrosion of main pipelines

The service life of a pipeline is determined by the rate of corrosion. Destruction due to corrosive wear of utility networks entails financial losses and poses a threat to the environment, labor safety, and deteriorates the quality of the transported product. Critical elements of systems are susceptible to corrosion: control and shut-off devices.

The causes of pipeline corrosion are external and internal. The following types of negative impacts are considered environmental factors:

Atmospheric;
Soil-ground;
Biocorrosion;
Stray currents;
Induced alternating currents.

Internal corrosion is caused by the chemical properties of the transferred substances, airing, and dynamic loads. The formation of sediment accelerates the process of changing the structure of the metal.

Corrosive destruction of equipment costs billions of rubles annually: inefficient operation, reduction in transported volumes, repair and maintenance costs, accidents. Pipeline corrosion control is carried out based on the standards of the Unified System of Protection against Corrosion and Aging (USZKS). The main regulatory document for underground structures is GOST 9.602-2016.

Types of pipeline corrosion

Iron reacts actively with oxygen only at a temperature of +260 Co. Such ranges are not supported in main lines, but an oxidative reaction can be triggered by moisture condensation in the insulating layer and microcracks of welds. This damage occurs when installation technologies are not followed and the service life is long.

Highways are characterized by electrochemical destruction mechanisms. In the chemical type, the metal interacts with the oxidizing agent without access to moisture. With electrochemical, moisture is present, and water, with salts dissolved in it, serves as an electrolyte.

It is customary to distinguish between two types of corrosion damage:

General: distributed evenly, calculated during design;
Local: appear under the influence of the active environment and tensile loads.

Types of local destruction:

Ulcerative: grooves on the outside, usually shallow in depth.
Pitting: point lesions with great depth;
Slotted: appear in the connecting gaps of parts, develop quickly;
Cracks: grow slowly until they reach a critical value, then quickly lead to an accident.

For oil and gas industry lines, microbial contamination poses an additional threat. The most dangerous are sulfate-reducing bacteria that produce sulfates, sulfites and large amounts of hydrogen sulfide. The formation of biofilms leads to peeling of protective coatings.

CS-CS.Net: Laboratory of the Electroshaman

Three years after installation, the thread at the tap of the heated towel rail began to leak

And I have new adventures! And VERY serious! They can be told in two ways: occult and technical. But there is a third way. So, during this year I had one dream about five times (!!). His prerequisites were different: either I come home in the evening and wash my hands, then at night I go to pee in the toilet, then I hear some noise and look into the plumbing closet... and I always see a trickle of water flowing through my beautiful pipes. In these dreams, I looked at the pipes and at first thought: “Oh, bullshit! I’ll close the inlet valve now and don’t care, then I’ll fix it in the morning!” And then I examined it carefully and always discovered that water was flowing either from the riser pipe, or directly from under the inlet tap.

After that, something immediately broke in my heart. I felt some kind of spitting, a blow and frustration. I immediately imagined and came into my head (in a dream) the thought that now I would have to disassemble a beautifully and perfectly made system and that then people would come who would not understand anything, would unscrew it, break it and trample on it.

At these moments in the dream, I was very upset, did not accept the situation, and with a fallen soul I called the plumbers to turn off the water. What happened next was exactly what I feared most: shady men came, dismantled my entire plumbing closet to get to the pipe and faucet, tore off the thermal insulation, welded a new pipe (crookedly), and gave water in the style of “and then don’t care - we’re ours.” the job was done." And in the dream I was left at the “broken trough” - all the wiring was destroyed, there was a new pipe, dirt and a new faucet.

And this is what I constantly dreamed about. In the dream, the worst thing was always not that the pipe was leaking, but that my beauty would be destroyed or somehow rudely treated by those who did not understand anything about this...

So, the events of last Thursday (10/24/2014). I’m sitting at home, organizing various matters related to the transfer of the shield assembly to Atomist. And I decide that before leaving for the weekend it would be good to inspect the taps. This is due to the fact that to prevent the taps from becoming overgrown, they must be closed and opened periodically (for example, once a month or a month and a half).

In general, it should be noted that I am VERY fussy about my plumbing. That is, I didn’t do it and “let her go”, allowing her to work as she wanted, but I was constantly inspecting something, tracking it and running to check the temperature on the towel. And when I go away for the weekend, I almost remotely worry about how the family will turn on the taps without me. And if the water is turned off, who will wash the filters? What if there’s something else?..

And there is also one interesting type of energy in the world that fucks a person very hard if he needs to let go of something for further development. This energy manifests itself like this: if a person needs to go further forward in life, but he is shaking over something, like a cat over gold, then it is “taken away” from him. Let's say a person needs to walk through a forest - his car breaks down. He won’t understand in a good way, he will swear and fix it and try to continue driving - it will break even worse. If he doesn’t understand again, he might burn out. In a particularly severe case, it will burn so that he will sit there and barely get out of there alive. There is no point in joking here - there is such energy, and it works VERY harshly.

Perhaps this is exactly what happened to me, because the new door and plumbing were constantly something that I languished over and could not let go of (stupidly hammer it in and let it take its course). Here, “to score” does not mean to throw it away or not to care, but to invest all the necessary strength and LET GO. In general, I may write a separate post about letting go later.

So, in the afternoon I turned on the taps and went about my business. And in the evening, when I went to write (remember the dream, right?), I suddenly discovered that there was something rusty dripping on the taps of the hot water collector. And fresh and moist. I immediately tensed up and at first began to think: “Yes, it’s probably some American woman who has unscrewed the towel and is leaking from it.” The crane and the American are shown in the photo below. We are talking about a tap on a towel, next to which there is a thermometer.

The location of the leaky faucet

Well, I began to inspect the tap, thinking: “To hell with it - I’ll turn off the towel now, and I’ll sort it out tomorrow morning.” I look around... and understand that THIS IS NOT AMERICAN. And not even any fittings! That’s why I see how the screed on the thermal insulation broke by itself and that on the tap on the outlet side of the substation there is rust and who knows what!

Current tap connection

And then I start to panic. Just exactly like in a dream about the fact that this is a complete emergency! Now I don’t know what to do - I need to break up my wiring, cut the beautiful colored thermal insulation, remove the faucet, twist and change something. And I’m creating a topic on MasterCity.Ru, where I’m panickingly describing the whole process of perversion with a tap, which I’m telling you here, but with conclusions and awareness.

In general, I thought that the faucet had rotted. And then the thought comes to a close in my head: if it rotted a long time ago, and it was dry, then if I “staggered” it during the day while closing and opening it, does this mean that it is barely holding on and could break at any moment? But it can! Then I get a picture of how I’m flooding the 7 floors below me with a stream of boiling water and... how I don’t even know where to pay what to all my neighbors as compensation for repairs.

It’s late, there’s no one to call - no one will help anyway, and there’s nothing to help with. And I kept watch in bed all night, sleeping with one eye open with the doors to the room and toilet open. And in the toilet there was a hose from a vacuum cleaner in case the faucet broke.

By the way, this is a very smart solution - a hose from a vacuum cleaner! If you really have something blown off a pipe, then remember the HOSE! You can put it on the pipe, and throw the other end into the toilet or window if the heating has failed. I read this advice on MasterCity.Ru, and it can sometimes help someone out.

Well, I also called the Atomic Engineer and in a shrunken voice told him that I had a complete emergency and that I needed his help, at least with keys, because I temporarily left all my tools in another place, and I don’t even have a key at home.

By the way, this is also bad practice! ALWAYS, ALWAYS have at least a minimum emergency supply of tools at home. Don’t be fooled by the thought “Nothing will happen, but if something happens, I’ll go and buy a key/insulating tape/screw—they’re sold everywhere.” Anything can happen, and according to the law of life lessons, the stores will not have the exact screw that is needed right now.

The Atomic Engineer just happens to have a new crane at hand at home, and on Friday he breaks away from work in the middle of the day and flies to me with the tool. He and I are completely confident that it is the faucet thread that has rotted and that we just need to drain the riser with the help of a local plumber and replace the faucet.

The nuclear worker comes to my house, and I call the local Santa and tell him the situation. Santa reacts as usual: Fuck him, he’ll stand there for another six months. Well, when you're ready, call me with salt. It will cost 600 rubles per hour. Only I can be at another facility, and you will have to wait.” Six hundred rubles per hour! That's FUCKING FUCKING! Why then in 2011 did they rip me off 2 (or even 2.5) thousand?!

More fun! The Atomic Man arrives and a mess begins! Santa is far away at this moment, and will not reach my basement until 16:30. Time - about 14 hours. There is nothing to do, and the Automotive Engineer and I are sitting and chatting about shields and fine materials.

And then the call came. Santa: “Well what? You are ready? I’m starting to drain!” We happily run to the plumbing cabinet and to the pressure gauges, expecting to hear the gurgling of water and see how the arrows on them will drop. And the arrows stand straight! 10 minutes pass. 15, 20. The arrows are standing.

So the arrow went down... and stood at a pressure of “4.5 bar”. Typical pressure is 5 bar. Hmmm... 30 minutes... the needle drops to 4 bar. We call him: “How are you? Are you draining it? - “I’m draining it.” And we start laughing nervously, because several times I caught moments when our risers were drained - it happened instantly. I went to brush my teeth - there was water. Then you go to rinse the cup - it’s gone. In general, he “drained” the water for about 40 minutes! It seems that he didn’t know much about the taps in the basement and probably stood and looked at the fountain of boiling water from the pipe, thinking that it was the rest of the water coming out. And, most likely, something was not blocked somewhere.

But finally the water was closed, and we attacked my wiring with four hands. I again had the same emotions as in the dream: I continued to languish over the pipes and hoped that we would now redo the faucet and everything would be ready and working. Why be ashamed? I perceived all the problems with water as if it were not external, but as if I had cut myself and blood was pouring out of the wound... I hoped that there would not be much to disassemble - only the shower gig assembly so that the key that needed to turn the tap would fit through.

First we removed the American woman from the heated towel rail:

They took the American woman off the tap

...and a LOT of sludge and dirt fell into the Atomist’s hand. And among the sludge there is some semicircular piece of metal that has rusted to an unrecognizable state. This did not excite us, and we continued to think: “Wow, there is so much dirt in the outlet!”

Sludge from scraps of thread that fell out of an American

...and started removing the tap. But the tap was removed poorly - it couldn’t be unscrewed. And when it unscrewed with a crunch, a terrible and serious picture called “P##ts carving” appeared before our eyes. About half of the carving that was done in 2011 remains. And the rest is ROTTEN! It is clear that there was nowhere to screw in the new faucet and something had to be done!

We removed the faucet - the threads were completely rotten

Here I express my deepest gratitude to Oleg SanSvar, who, with a sore throat, was constantly on the phone with me all this time and helped me with support and advice! I thank him so much for at least keeping me in a fighting mood! I'll write about everyone at the end of the post!

In general, the situation is trashy and serious. Entrance without hot water, time - approximately 17:30 or even 18. Friday. The mechanic from the housing office questions us and hurries us in places - they say, how, what is there? And sometimes a small stream of blackish slurry flows from the outlet: apparently, one of the neighbors has cold water flowing through the mixer and entering the hot water pipe.

Then events happen strangely and in an endless series.

First we call Santa and explain the situation to him. At first he refuses and says that you can screw a faucet onto this piece of thread and that nothing will be done. But, apparently, he understands that ordinary tricks will not work here and that he ended up with professionals who are interested in doing everything right and well. The dialogue goes on like this:

- Well, do you have welding? What about a screwdriver (a tool for cutting threads)? - No, there’s nothing! Welding - over there in Krylatsky now. Damn! The boss told me - don’t mess with me, it’s Friday! - So, what if we call the emergency lights? They should have everything! - No, they don’t have anything! What are they? The water will be turned off - and that’s it! - So... well, what if we go and buy a clutch? (It’s already close to 19 o’clock - what the hell is a klupp? Where can I buy it?) - Well, let’s do it. I will sit in the basement and make sure that no one turns on the water.

An idea pops into our head: “Wow! Leroy! There must be something there! You just need to trim the thread a little and screw on the tap. To hell with a towel - the main thing is to give water!”, and we break down...

...and then miracles begin. Perhaps they are connected precisely with the fact that I somehow (overcoming my suffering for the divorce and the beauties and realizing the kicks of the Universe) began to accept what was happening. In general, the elevator was busy, and we ran up the stairs on foot. I run through the floor where the chairman of our housing cooperative lives. Our chairman is a fighting person, and she raised our house from ruins so much that we even won permission for major renovations!

In general, and suddenly an idea comes to my mind: well, I’ll call her and ask for help! I'm calling:

- Haven’t you read my soap? I wrote to you last night that I have a problem with the faucet! And now there is a complete emergency. The water was turned off, the threads were rotten - there was nothing to cut with. Maybe your husband has a klupp? - So, wait a minute! Have you tried calling the emergency lights? - So the Housing Office plumber said that they have nothing - no tools! - Come on, stop! I'm not at home right now, I'll be there in 30 minutes. When I return home, I have the phone number for our emergency crew. I'll call there and let you know!

...and Atomist and I, instead of going to Leroy, just go for a WALK! =) And throw out the trash at the same time! Well, let’s digest what happened in our heads. And the plumber sits in the basement and guards the water... like a Cerberus.

We took a walk and walked up the stairs because the elevator was busy again. And just as we were approaching the chairman’s floor, we heard some voices and the door closing. And since I myself am loudly talking about pipes and water all over the stairs, this door immediately opens and the chairwoman comes out to us. The issue is resolved in literally 5 minutes. She goes to get her notebook and dials the number:

- Hello! This is <...>. We have a service agreement with you. We need help, not for free. Yes, the tap broke and the water was turned off. It is necessary to cut the thread or weld a new one. What pipe? 3/4. Tap? No, there is a tap. Got it, we're waiting!

And already for us:

“They are on call now, and then they come to us.” Wait!

The emergency crew is coming! Two stern workers who inspect the entire battlefield. Again the standard question arises: “Who did all this?” - “Ya!” And then they announce the prices: without welding - 2 thousand. With welding - 4 thousand. Yes, these are damn pennies!

I give the go-ahead for the work, and then everything turns out just like in my dreams! First they file off a piece of thread, and then they take a die and start cutting the thread. In order for the screw head to fit through, you have to break part of the automatic shield body, which is used as a large junction box. Reluctantly, I break...

...at first the loop went well. At these moments, something like a struggle was happening inside me with myself and with my ability to “let go” of what needed to be let go. As soon as I began to let go of my heart inside, things went smoothly and smoothly for the emergency workers. And as soon as my heart “sank” and began to ache with thoughts: “What’s going to happen, now everything has collapsed” - then immediately (!!) things didn’t go well for the emergency workers!

My heart skipped a beat - the emergency worker injured his hand. It clicked again - the pipe under the plug began to crumble and break like glass. And nothing happened with the klupp - he got stuck in the pipe.

The verdict was serious: disassemble part of the water distribution (remove the DHW input and meter) and COOK! And for welding it was necessary to remove all the beautiful thermal insulation from the pipes, disassemble the place to work... and the heart skipped a beat again and learned to let go of events with the help of that hard energy.

And for the guys, things either went well or didn’t go well again. So, the rotten branch was cut down for nothing. Here's how to disassemble the plumbing cabinet.

Destroying the plumbing cabinet for overcooking the outlet at the substation

Here is the bend cut. We didn’t have a chance: we could cut the bend only in one place where we could get to it by welding.

Outlet cut for heated towel rail

And then there were surprises and a huge pile of questions to which even after a week I cannot find an answer. Look how the outlet for the heated towel rail has become overgrown in THREE YEARS! What is this? Dirt? Remains of metal from a rotted pipe? Where does it come from? Why?..

The allotment has become completely overgrown in three years

Then there were again long adventures. As soon as I relaxed, things went smoothly. On the staircase, the emergency workers began cutting threads on a piece of pipe they had taken with them. Sometimes they succeeded, sometimes they didn’t. As a result, the nuclear scientist and I had to help them: we all held the pipe together.

And in the end, they cut a thread on a piece of pipe, welded it to the old one and screwed on the tap. And I somehow came to terms with everything that happened. I didn’t look specifically at the welding process itself, deciding that it didn’t matter - whatever they destroy, they will destroy - and that this is the lesson that needs to be learned: learn to let go of what is no longer needed, and not rush around with it like a piece of cake .

...and the plumber sat in the basement all this time guarding the water! Sort of like a thermos and a bun.

So, what happened at the output and in the end. I'll give you a tricky photo.

Junk after dismantling the bend: thread residue and old bend

1 is a remnant of an old thread. Look how it rotted and how thin the metal of the pipe became at the edge of the thread. 2 is an attempt to cut a new one. The pipe was so rotten that it was crushed like foil. 3 - crumpled outlet pipe to the substation.

This is how this pipe crumpled:

Attempting to cut a new thread on a bend

And here is the other side of the pipe. Look how thick the metal was! On the reverse side, the pipe has thinned out by about half! And it’s overgrown by almost 2/3 of the diameter! And this - in three years!

Completely overgrown outlet for heated towel rail

The emergency workers are great! They did everything quickly and brutally. We got our money and moved on. But the plumber did something weird. Because the Chairman then called me and said: “How are you doing there? Is the hazard warning light working? I saw through the window how the car arrived! When they’re finished, ask the plumber to check so that he opens the water everywhere!”

In general, it turned out that while Santa was draining the water, he blocked everything and covered the water to the ENTIRE entrance, and not just to my riser. And at the same time, also halves of the neighboring entrances! Wow! And we thought - why the hell is he being so stupid there! As a result, water was returned to everyone, and Santa was paid for all his gatherings in the basement.

Electrochemical Corrosion and Lead Investigation

Now let’s try to draw some conclusions and build several versions. On MasterCity.Ru and in communication with SanSvar and Greshnov, the following versions were considered:

Poor packaging of the faucet . That Svaga70, when he overcooked the risers for me, was in a hurry and forgot to lubricate the flax with Unipack. That's why all the taps stood idle, but this one rotted. The version was rejected because we found traces of paste on the removed tap.
Bad pipe for outlet to the substation . Greshnov said that sometimes Svaga70 took the bends and sawed off part of the thread. I can't confirm this here yet, because I remember that I dragged two pipes (1 1/4 and 3/4) myself so that all the bends were made from them. Of course, these pipes could also fail.
Occult reasons are the same lesson with not letting go of events . This does not mean that it was precisely because of this that the pipe rotted. But usually in such cases everything works according to the expression “where it’s thin, it breaks.” That is, if at least once there was a possibility that your favorite pipe would rot, then this probability intensified and fit into reality. At the moment, this is the first reason for me, because it’s not without reason that I dreamed about all this, it’s not without reason that I felt in my dreams that my beloved brainchild had suffered, and it’s not without reason that in everyday life I was constantly running around with the pipes and couldn’t “let go” of them.
Electrochemical corrosion . This is a complex thing, which I will now tell you about in more detail. Whether this was a version, I don’t know. But it is possible because our house is old and there is no SUP.

So, Electrochemical corrosion is a situation when some unfortunate combination of metals begins to rot on its own. Now we know that copper and aluminum cannot be connected together, because a galvanic couple will form and the connection will rot. And in the aquatic environment there are some metals that can also work the same way. Moreover, if there is an external voltage potential, then the most ordinary metals such as steel rot hellishly quickly.

What is needed for that? The presence of tension and an unsuccessful combination of metals. And the process will begin. Here we had:

House with gas, no PE and no home SUP at all. The zero from the TP is not grounded, but simply comes in and powers the loads. The pipes are also not grounded anywhere.
Modern equipment connected to water and with a power filter, due to which there is 110 volts on the body, is in abundance in the house.
We don’t know who “grounded” where on the pipe. And we won't find out.
In the basement, all last year, fistulas constantly appeared on the pipes, and people ran to seal them.
After installing it, my towel immediately began to corrode a month or two later - small spots of rust began to appear on it at the seams. And then he suddenly stopped doing it. Perhaps at this moment in time the pipe began to rot.
The towel is connected without electrical connection to the riser - through insulated PE-X.

Whether this is all a sign of electrochemical corrosion or not, I don’t know for sure. And I don’t know how to fix it either. For now, I have hope that if next year we reconstruct the ASU of the house and replace the electrical risers, then maybe after that all the pipes will stop corroding.

But the most important thing for me is to learn to let go of what needs to be let go. Most likely, I will now write another post in the hot wet wake, which I will devote to this very thing.

In the meantime, I bridged the towel itself between each other through the water sockets, and connected it to the upper and lower outlets of the riser. Let it stand and stand. You should write the emergency number on the wall over there and forget about it forever.

Shunting the towel

I bypassed everything with what was at hand - clamps, TML tips and PuGV 10.0 wire.

We bridge the riser and taps

That's my story here! I learned an important lesson from it, but the process of letting go is difficult and is still ongoing. Don’t repeat my mistakes, otherwise that same energy will come and ruin everything for you. And the dream, consider it fulfilled exactly as it was warned - everything was exactly right. Part of the wiring had to be dismantled, there was a lot of trash, and the situation was serious. And even the “guys” came and trampled.

Acknowledgments

So, I forgot the most important thing, because I was in a hurry to write a post! I want to say thank you to this:

Atomist (Meldir) , because for the sake of me and for the sake of support, he gave up all his work and spent the whole day on me until late in the evening! I wouldn't have been able to cope with this challenge without him!
Our Chairman - she helped to sort everything out competently, deal with the emergency situation and, one might say, built and inspired us all! I'll have to buy her a cake and give it to her!
Oleg SanSvar - with a sore throat, he provided support over the phone like “I don’t care! It’s their problem that the house will be without water - let them call an emergency, and that’s it!”
Greshnov Nikolay - at that time he had hellishly personal matters, but then he called back and also became interested in this story.

Protection of main pipelines from corrosion

To increase the service life of highway elements, a set of measures is provided that corresponds to various types of negative impacts. During installation, drainage is provided and connections are insulated depending on the grade of steel. Active methods of protecting pipelines from corrosion are constantly being developed: reducing the aggressiveness of the environment, treating gas and oil pipelines with bactericides, and introducing inhibitor substances.

Protective coatings for pipelines against corrosion play an important role. Treatment with chemical compounds reduces the electrochemical effect and prevents the formation of point processes in microcracks. In addition, the internal surface and reinforcement remain smooth and prevent the formation of sediment. Industrial industry standards regulate the properties of coatings depending on the characteristics of the transported medium.

Presence of dissolved gases

The greatest danger is the dissolution of carbon dioxide and oxygen in water. Of these two gases, oxygen poses the greatest danger. With its high concentration, due to rising temperatures, corrosion of heating pipes will develop more and more intensely.

Sometimes the water also contains carbon dioxide impurities. This significantly reduces the pH level.

As a result, protective films and deposits begin to dissolve much faster, and there is a possibility of contact with oxidation catalysts.

Stainless steel

Stainless steel is often considered a corrosion-resistant metal. But in fact, it is not the metal itself that is corrosion-resistant. Stainless steel acquires this property through a process called passivation.

Passivation is the formation of a thin layer of oxide on the surface of a metal upon contact with air. The oxide layer protects the metal while maintaining its original color and shine. In the case of stainless steel, this layer forms naturally and is resistant to rust and other types of corrosion.

Stainless steel can be used industrially for systems where corrosion resistance, the ability to withstand high temperatures and high standards of sanitation are absolutely necessary, such as in heavy industry or medical applications. TLV uses stainless steel in many of its steam traps and offers stainless steel options on many other products to meet these needs. While stainless steel products may have a higher purchase price, it is also important to consider their remarkable durability and strength. Many companies now order only stainless steel connecting lines to avoid blockages caused by corrosion.