1200 CP for Pipelines Corrosion Prevention and Metallurgy Manual

other facilities). For bare or poorly coated lines, soil resistivity also has a large
effect.
See Section 1222 for more detailed instructions for using attenuation charts.

Effect of Coating
The quality of the pipelines coating greatly affects the current required to protect
the line and the rate of attenuation of current and voltage along the line. With well-
coated lines, the current requirements are modest and attenuation is slight, and drain
points may be spaced at wide intervals. With bare or poorly coated lines, current
requirements are large, attenuation is rapid, and drain points must be spaced at close
intervals.
For design purposes, it is convenient to express coating quality as coating conduc-
tivity (leakage conductance) in micromhos per square foot. A coating conductivity
of 510 micromhos per square foot or less is excellent; a conductivity greater than
100 micromhos per square foot is relatively poor.
A single rectifier can protect up to 30 or 40 miles of wellcoated pipe in each direc-
tion, or a long, well-coated line can be protected with drain points spaced at inter-
vals as great as 60 or 80 miles. At the other extreme, a bare or very poorly coated
line may require drain points every few thousand feet for complete protection.

1214 Voltage Limitations

Coating Disbondment
An excessive potential applied to a coated line has a detrimental effect on the
coating; hydrogen evolution and/or the elevated pH at the pipe surface may destroy
the bond between the coating and the pipe, increasing coating conductance by many
times.
The rate of coating deterioration increases rapidly as the polarized potential is
increased. For this reason, the maximum potential applied to a coated pipeline
should be approximately 1.2 V (polarized) referenced to a copper sulfate electrode.

Maximum Rectifier Spacing

The potential and current at the drain point that are required to protect a finite line
(or the section between minimum points in the case of a multiple-drain-point
system) increase rapidly with line length. The polarized potential change at the drain
point should be approximately 1.2 volts. This limits the length of coated line that
can be protected from a single drain point and thus determines the maximum
spacing between units in a multiple-drain-point system.

Bare Lines
The maximum voltage that can be applied to a bare line is limited only by
economics, except when limited by the steel being subject to hydrogen embrittle-
ment. An excessive potential usually will not damage bare steel pipe, but it will
result in excessive current pick-up and inefficient use of the applied power.

August 1999 1200-6 Chevron Corporation