Numerical Simulation Study Of Cathodic Protection Station Area

The technology of cathodic protection has been used in the corrosion filed of oil and gas pipeline for many years. This technology was mainly applied to long-distance pipeline in the early period, and station’s spill cased by corrosion makes operators gradually pay more attention to regional cathodic protection of station.The complexity of environment leads to many new problems after the cathodic protection system running for a period. It’s difficult to solve these problems only by using field experience and traditional technology. With the rapid development of computer technology and numerical method of cathodic protection, more methods, such as FDM, FEM and BEM, have been applied to the research. It not only reduces the cost but also provides a new way to solve the problem.In this paper, numerical simulation technology has been used to calculate the potential distribution of station’s regional cathodic protection system, and some regularity problems are researched based on the calculation results. The main tasks are as follows:(l)Select BEM as calculation method, which is generally recognized as the most suitable method in cathodic protection field. And then carry out calculation using software BEASY CP, which is based on BEM.(2)Set up the physical model of cathodic protection in laboratory to conduct electrochemical experiment, and develop numerical simulation calculation to verify the reliability of calculation method at the same time.(3)Set up and calculate on the physical model of a medium-size station’s cathodic protection in BEASY CP software with data collecting from station. The software is proved with high accuracy in studying regional cathodic protection of station after contrasting the simulation results and measured field potential data.(4) Extend this method to a large-size station. According to simulation results, it researches on issues about current distribution of different ground electrodes and the interference from regional cathodic protection to the pipelines outside the station.