(GE: Billerica, MA) –  Rightrax HT, the latest on-line corrosion monitoring system from GE Sensing and Inspection Technologies, provides accurate and reliable wall thickness data of pipes and vessels and is capable of operating at extremely high temperatures. Corrosion monitoring is extremely important for users in the oil and gas industry to elevate productivity, provide significant cost savings, and help ensure plant integrity.

“It is estimated that the cost of corrosion equals 3 percent of the U.S. gross domestic product, while the overall cost relating to oil and gas, power generation, and other key industries exceeds $150 billion annually,” explains Jim Costain, oil and gas marketing leader of GE Enterprise Solutions. “Industry estimates that 20 to 25 percent of these costs can be avoided by better use of existing monitoring technologies. Rightrax HT is a technology that can make a significant contribution to these cost savings.”

Rightrax HT has applications in the oil and gas sector in many downstream situations, where corrosion monitoring is necessary to ensure plant integrity or to maximize plant function and operational life. Typically, it can help a refinery plant process opportunity-crude by monitoring the corrosion rate in order to control the addition of inhibitor. In a standard configuration, the new system features groups of four high-temperature sensors, which are clamped directly to the pipe or vessel to be monitored and connected to a single sensor interface.

As with all GE Rightrax corrosion monitoring systems, the new high-temperature version provides an ultrasonic, nonintrusive, on-line solution to corrosion and erosion monitoring for permanent installation on pipelines and process plants. Once fitted, there is no need to remove lagging, erect scaffolding, and excavate pipelines or shutdown plants to check on plant or equipment integrity. Sensors are simply clamped to the surface of the pipe or vessel to be monitored. The ease of system connectivity with existing plant asset management platforms allows users of such platforms to significantly extend their use beyond on-line rotating asset management into the on-line management of fixed assets and trending long-term corrosion data.

Rightrax HT’s current temperature capability extends to 350ºC with an accuracy and resolution that is significantly higher than that achievable with current systems. In common with all GE on-line corrosion monitoring systems, this new high-temperature addition, which leverages GE Fanuc Intelligent Platforms Proficy HMI/SCADA CIMPLICITY technology, a multifunctional software platform for monitoring several types of industrial assets, has been designed to easily connect to existing plant asset management platforms such as GE System 1. It can also be used to complement pigging systems, specifically to monitor critical spots and nonpiggable areas.

To learn more visit us at www.gesensinginspection.com