EFC Working Party 16: Cathodic Protection

Mission

 

Objectives

The general objective of Working Party 16 is "to develop the science and technology of cathodic protection (CP) for buried and immersed metal structures including offshore structures, ships, pipes, the internal parts of vessels, etc…"Care is taken to avoid duplication of effort and conflict of interest and to collaborate as much as possible with other EFC Working Parties (WP9 Marine Corrosion, WP11 Corrosion in Concrete, WP13 Corrosion in Oil and Gas Production, WP14 Coatings) and also in Europe with CEOCOR Sector A, active in cathodic protection of buried water and gas pipelines and, at an international level, with NACE technical committees acting in CP.
 

Strategy Plan

The major objectives are presently:·

• Exchange of information and recommendations for CP measurements and coating surveys techniques for buried pipelines.
• Follow-up of progress in Certification of CP personnel in Europe, especially consecutive to the publication of EN 15257.
• Preparation of an EFC Publication giving the best papers presented at the previous EUROCORR's.

Previous activities

 

History

Approval was given by the STAC (Science and Technology Advisory Committee) of the EFC to hold the inaugural meeting of EFC WP16 devoted to Cathodic Protection on 29th September 1998 during EUROCORR'98 in Utrecht, the Netherlands, under the convenorship of Marcel Roche who was elected as Chairman of this new Working Party, officially approved by the next EFC General Assembly.

 

Topics

Certification of personnel, services and companies active in cathodic protection.

This has been the first topic addressed by EFC WP16. There was a consensus on the need for a better knowledge of the existing situation and on the development of a common system based on harmonised requirements and/or mutual recognition and approval in Europe for certification of personnel active in CP. A work was carried out by EFC WP16 for detailing and comparing the qualification and certification schemes existing at the end of the 1990's (EFC WP16 internal report, May 2001, see hereunder in Publications ). This document constituted the basis for editing a dedicated European standard. Such a request was presented by several members at the November 1999 meeting of CEN/TC219 in Paris and a proposal was made to CEN for an addition of this new Work Item to its business plan. CEN TC219 WG5 has then been mandated to write the project of standard which has been published as EN 15257 ("Cathodic Protection - Competence levels and certification of cathodic protection personnel") in Dec. 2006.
A follow-up is now organised by EFC WP16, especially for the progress of implementation of EN 15257 in European countries. The situation is updated for each country in tables giving the cumulative number of delivered certificates and the number of active persons who are presently certified, for each competence level and each application sector. The latest published information is given in Appendix 4 of the minutes of the 14th meeting in Edinburgh in Sept 2008 (see hereunder in Excerpt of meeting minutes ).
 

Cathodic Protection measurements and coating surveys techniques for buried pipelines.

This is the issue related to cathodic protection which remains the most discussed, especially for the standardisation work. EFC WP16 contributes to this discussion, during its meetings and sessions at Eurocorr's. The final objective is to issue an EFC Publication on the "State of the Art Report for the assessment of CP of buried pipelines", if possible in co-operation with CEOCOR Sector A. In a first step, EFC WP16 will collaborate to the edition of an EFC Publication on "Pipelines Corrosion Management" managed by EFC WP13 (Oil & Gas) and giving the industry's best practice for corrosion management of pipelines from design stage to end of life. A similar document is currently prepared in the USA by members of the NACE Task Group 370.