Despite somewhat inclement weather, nearly forty Institute members and non-members gathered at Birmingham University’s plush conference centre for the kick-off meeting of the new CED (the Corrosion Engineering Division of the Institute). This rejuvenation of the CED is occurring with the approval of the Council. It will operate in coordination with other corrosion groups (e.g. NACE, WCO and EFC), as agreed at a preliminary CED meeting that was held at the Edinburgh EuroCorr conference.

Nick Smart gives introductory welcome

In the first instance, seven important technical areas have been identified as requiring CED working parties. These are: Coatings (which has been semi-active in the last few years and has two active task groups running on corrosion aspects of intumescent coatings and water jetting), headed by Brenda Peters, Nuclear Corrosion headed by Nick Smart, Corrosion Monitoring headed by Bill Cox, Oilfield Chemicals, headed by Peter Allison, Cathodic Protection, headed by Ross Fielding, Corrosion in Concrete, headed by John Broomfield (Ali Sharif deputised on the day) and Water Chemistry, headed by Pam Simpson. The primary aims of the new CED are to provide a forum for UK corrosion engineers in specific technical areas to communicate with each other, to disseminate relevant information, for example about forthcoming events, to review current technical practices and to produce new documents where required to meet current UK needs.

After an introduction to the future plans for the CED from Nick Smart, an excellent plenary lecture was given by a well known expert in the field of environmentally assisted cracking in nuclear applications, Peter Scott. He presented a comprehensive review of current corrosion issues in pressurised working reactors (PWRs). Interestingly there are still some corrosion mechanisms that are not fully understood. The talk was illustrated with numerous excellent slides and really started the day off well. After the plenary lecture and several interesting questions the audience broke up into the working groups, which followed the agendas that each working group chair had prepared beforehand. This was followed by a very pleasant lunch, which provided the main opportunity for personal networking.

Peter Scott presents his lecture

After lunch, the working groups continued their activities. The Coatings group had six attendees and discussed inter alia, the previous TACC reports prepared by old task groups in the 1980s and what to do with them, future work (e.g. development of an in-situ monitoring device for coatings – more on this in the next technical topics column!), a talk by Jeremy Twigg on the progress of the water jetting task group and Douglas Mills summarising the position with the Intumescent coating task group.

In the meeting of the Nuclear group, which had an attendance of eight, David Tice presented a review of the effect of high temperature water reactor environments on fatigue crack growth of structural and piping steels, and Steve Walters highlighted some of the key corrosion issues facing the nuclear industry for discussion. This was followed by a general discussion of the future possible activities of the group. The areas highlighted were the suggestion of a bibliography of key sources of information for use by young corrosion scientists entering the field and the possibility of using the Nuclear working groups as a forum for university researchers to present relevant work to industry representatives.

Audience for plenary

The Cathodic Protection group, led by Ross Fielding, was very well attended (with sixteen attendees). It was agreed that the CP group should encompass Corrosion of Steel in Concrete for this meeting. The minutes of the meeting are extensive and are available if you join the CP Working Group e-mail group (see below for details). A very active meeting was held, with many suggestions for future activities outlined.

The Monitoring group combined with the Water Treatment and Oilfield Chemicals group, because these were the smallest groups on the day. The members reviewed the responses from the CED questionnaire that had been sent to members and discussed the scope of future activities within each group. Pam Simpson gave a presentation about the use of ATP methods for monitoring microbial corrosion within water systems.

Towards the end of the afternoon, the working group meetings closed and all the attendees reconvened to discuss how the first meeting of the new CED had gone. It was generally agreed that the meeting had been a success and there was support for a second similar meeting in Spring 2009. The details of the venue and the exact format and arrangements for this meeting will be circulated in due course. It is to be hoped that the meeting will provide the launch pad for active working groups for many years to come.

Joining CED Working Groups
Contact details for the working group chairs will be published on the Institute’s web site. Minutes of the inaugural working group meetings will be available from the Institute’s head office (admin@icorr.org). In the future, greater use will be made of the Institute’s improved web site, for posting documents such as minutes of meetings, draft documents, etc.

Meanwhile if anybody has an interest in CED generally and/or wishes to be involved in any of the aforementioned groups please contact either of the authors in the first instance and we will put you in touch with the appropriate person. If two or three people want to start a group of their own then also contact Nick Smart or Douglas Mills. The email addresses are nick.smart@serco.com or douglas@harrbridge.freeserve.co.uk

We are currently using EGroups to facilitate discussion. In order to join please go to the relevant Group webpage (please note the words are separated by _ ):

Corrosion Monitoring: http://tech.groups.yahoo.com/group/CED_Corrosion_Monitoring/

Nuclear: http://tech.groups.yahoo.com/group/CED_Working_Group_Nuclear/

Coatings: http://tech.groups.yahoo.com/group/CED_Working_Group_Coatings/

Oilfield Chemicals: http://tech.groups.yahoo.com/group/CED_Working_Group_Oilfield_Chemicals/

Cathodic Protection: http://tech.groups.yahoo.com/group/CED_Working_Group_Cathodic_Protection/

Water Treatment: http://tech.groups.yahoo.com/group/CED_Working_Group_Water_Treatment/

Corrosion in Concrete: http://tech.groups.yahoo.com/group/CED_Working_Group_Corrosion_In_Concrete/

and click on the blue box on the top right corner which says “Join this Group!” . Your request will be processed within a few days. When using the EGroups please note that for security reasons you can only using the email address you give in your Joining request. You can however contact the Moderator CED_Working_Group@yahoogroups.com and ask for additional email addresses to be added.

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