RFID Bloggy'n Tips: RFID Technology for Automatic Data Capture in Corrosion Monitoring

Corrosion is a major problem in many industries. Different kinds of corrosion prevention techniques are developed and widely adopted over decades. However, the high cost and the lack of technology to monitor and maintain such system (e.g. cathodic protection system), results in limited scope of deployment or maintenance, and therefore affects the overall protection result.

Why bother monitoring?

An effective corrosion prevention systems should be designed with following concerns;

Accidental or physical damage by any unexpected means.
Theft or vandalism
Anode life do varies
Deterioration can happen in a short period of time, such as flooding.
Instand data such as stray current, only happens in short period of time unexpectedly

Limitations of conventional CP monitoring and stray current monitoring systems;

Time consuming. Manual measurement is costy and clumsy due to remote area or inaccessible spot. Each survey exercise, no matter the schedule frequency, is a hustle to management.
Huge error, corrosion measurement often requires special expertise knowledge, still, they are highly varies, unrepeatable and not presentable.
Hard to capture some instant data; Stray current in underground structure only appears in a very short period of time, without a 24-7 real time monitor system, it is no way to capture and manually measure such intense and unpredictable phenomenon.
Hard to analysis; due to above reasons, the lack of testing points means lack of statistical significant data for structural health evaluation, which results in wrong scope planning for maintenance or repair work.

Conventional Method	Auto CP System
External junction box to link with up to multi-channels of sacrificial Anode / reference electrode and manually measure every 30 days using voltmeter	Active RFID Tag (embedded or external type are available), can connect up to 2 sacrificial anode / reference electrode and report measurement in regular periods
Possibility of deviating from standard practice	Free of deviation due to manual practice
Lack of environmental data	Temperature, pH, pressure and humidity data can be record together with corrosion data
Hard to retrieve historical data	All trends are instantly available online on one click Alerts email / SMS can be configured for any event trigger.

Photo shows a manual measurement using multimeter in Stray Current Monitoring Project for underground metro transit, data can only be measured when the metro is not operating.

Automated system monitoring is essential for "maintenance free" corrosion protection systems. Only automated monitoring system can address the above limitations of conventional cathodic protection.

Programmed health check for reinforcement steel. It completely avoids the variance due to different human measurement practice
Automated warning and alert. Corrosion protection system now can actively ask for help in case of accident or treat.
Visualized graph and analytics. It provides more intrinsic view for non-corrosion expert to monitor periodically. Decisions are easier to make with handy data. Preventive maintenance can also be easily scheduled with visual records.

Professional Services we provide include

Field survey and telemetry consultancy service for Corrosion Engineers.
Consultancy for data acquisition systems for critical parameters in Galvanic CP system, impressed current system, transformer rectifiers, stray current monitoring systems, etc
Provision of hardware of monitoring system,
Online web-analytic hosting and alert service
System integration to intelligent building service control

Voltmeter and data logging system are suitable for

Gathering concrete/steel health check date from Reference Electrode
Galvanic CP and anode life real time monitoring and warning
Impressed current system monitoring
Stray current monitoring

Data Loggers use GSM/GPRS & RF technologies for long range communication, especially for human inaccessible spots, such as

- Any flyovers or Bridges

- Pillars of habour

- Tunnel, pipes,

- Ceiling of church or old buildings

- Underground metro, subway, etc.

Photo shows the conventional junction box in monitoring the Sacrificial Anodes in old building

SYSTEM OVERVIEW

Features of Data Acquisition Unit

Monitoring the system online/offline status
Allowing customized preset of data logging period, high flexibility by offer intensive recording period, or event trigger data logging mode.
Automatically collecting protection current or potential, or potentials of various types of sacrificial anodes, CPs, inert anodes or permanent reference electrodes
Sample or surrounding environmental data: temperature, humidity, pH, shock vibration.

Features of RF unit:

Integrated RF consultancy would be provided for Corrosion Engineer. It may consist of 2 parts; an Sensor-data collection and network data transmission. For the sensor-data collection, depends on the type of systems, such as concrete embedded type or exposed junction box, regional RF regulations and the types of network, we can offer 915MHz and 2.4GHz ISM band in either Zig-Bee or proprietary protocol (empowered by Empress Active RFID series). They can be powered by replaceable battery, AC power network, or solar powered network.

Remark: Empress Active RFID system is a 2.4GHz low power consumption digital data transmission method for identification and environmental data capturing. A series of handheld reader and stationary reader are available.

The network data would be sent back to server either using TCP/IP network or GSM/GPRS/3G network, depends on the availability of the network in the region.

Features of ALAYA Online monitoring system

- Secured web-base, allows access of data anytime, anywhere,

- Intrinsic visualization and presentation of data point, trend and report

- Emergency alerts can notify authorized personnel through SMS or E-mail