Guideline for an assessment of electrochemical noise measurement devices
Abstract
Pro-active ageing management is becoming more and more important for the economical and safe operation of industrial plants. A key element for a pro-active ageing management approach is to apply in situ corrosion monitoring. The electrochemical noise (EN) technique is an example of a promising method, especially for monitoring localised corrosion phenomena. Currently, research work on the EN technique is carried out in several laboratories worldwide for different kind of industrial applications but also for the investigation of corrosion mechanisms. A prerequisite for performing serious research on the EN measurement technique is a careful evaluation of the measuring system, even if commercially available EN measurement instruments are used. Therefore, testing on well-defined dummy cells should always be a preliminary step to assess the baseline noise of the EN measurement equipment and to ensure data validity. For this purpose a guideline has been developed by the European Cooperative Group on Corrosion Monitoring of Nuclear Materials (ECG-COMON 1) as an outcome from round-robin testing on EN. The current guideline describes a simple procedure for the performance and evaluation of EN measurement equipment using dummy cells.