You are here:
Before Corrosion Control: What You Need to Know
Citation:
Schock, M. Before Corrosion Control: What You Need to Know. 18th Annual EPA Drinking Water Workshop: Small System Challenges and Solutions Corrosion Training Session (Session T1), Cincinnati, OH, August 30 - September 02, 2021.
Impact/Purpose:
Corrosion control for any water distribution system materials, from plant to tap, is often mistakenly thought of as an independed, simple, add-on treatment process. Often mistakes are made in choosing the right type of corrosion control, stemming from inadequate information about the overall water qualilty, variations in water quality, fouled pipe surfaces, and inadequate knowledge of the operations of the distribution systems. This presentation reminds the audience (regulators, consultants, plant operators) of the many interrelating factors that must be considered before choosing and implementing corrosion control for water systems of all sizes.
Description:
This presentation intruduces regulators, consultants and water system operators/managers to processes that can interfere with corrosion contro treatment (CCT), the critical importance of pH control, what to look for to gather the right (and enough) system and water quality information. The presentation highlights a very useful tool, the anion-cation balance, to determine completeness of the necessary water chemistry analyses. Several examples are given of process changes to facilitate CCT from field studies and an example is given of problems that resulted in one case from not gathering the proper information before making a signficant water quality change, thus causing a long-term lead corrosion problem. The presentation ends with a reminder summary of how to broadly evaluate system information and treatment change needs to allow optimization of CCT.