Cathodic Protection - Remote monitoring

01/03/2021


Environment: Marine

Client Sector: Environmental Survey

Services provided: 

  • Process improvement / Risk mitigation
  • Complete Product Design
  • Electronics Printed Circuit Board
  • Firmware design and programming
  • Google IoT core setup
  • Mechanical design of IP68 enclosures

Our Case Study:

Challenge - In order to monitor Cathodic Protection levels on a structure, surveyors usually have to go regularly to the field to manually take measurements with a standard multimeter instrument. This device allows to measure the potential between a Ag/AgCl electrode and the steel structure. The standard method has some limits. First, manual readings can be wrong and the readings have to be manually extracted and matched with the site location. Also, harsh weather conditions may disrupt the operation. The objective is to reduce the need for manual operations and as a result the risk of human error.

Solution - CEEQ Design has developed a simple, waterproof corrosion measuring instrument that can transmit the data to the relevant parties so that the data can be verified by a senior engineer if necessary while the technician is still on site. This IP68 portable measuring device with GPS is water resistant and can be easily handled by the person on site thanks to its functional design (the button can be pressed even when wearing gloves).

Thanks to the GPS, the data is recorded directly with the location, so that no additional data processing is required. The device automatically transmits the data via NB-IoT or LTE-M (cell phone network) to a web portal.

Because the data is stored on the Google Cloud, it can be processed to trend and verify anode health state and predict when a replacement will be needed.

Future - Conductivity Sensor can be added. The system could also be installed in fixed location to monitor the data in real-time without human intervention on site and can be powered by a solar panel for low power consumption.

Our Solution strengths:

  • Easy-to-Use System
  • Lower risk of human error
  • Reliable data collection with geotagging
  • Low power NB-IoT or LTE-M
  • IP68 Waterproof
  • Instant reporting to CP supervisor