The Future of Corrosion Monitoring: Pro-active Management for Enhanced Safety and Efficiency

The Critical Role of Corrosion Monitoring in Protecting Essential Networks

Beneath our cities and landscapes, vast networks of pipelines quietly transport sewage, water, oil, and gas—vital resources that sustain communities and industries, and critical infrastructure to safely transport them. These distribution networks can travel hundreds of kilometres, often through challenging and remote terrains, where connectivity can be spare and monitoring approaches difficult to implement. Yet despite their critical importance, many of these systems remain vulnerable to their two greatest enemies: corrosion and leaks.

When Corrosion Goes Undetected: A Cascading Crisis

Undetected corrosion in pipelines poses a significant threat, leading to catastrophic failures that can have far-reaching consequences. When a sewage pipeline corrodes it will eventually break down, resulting in spills and leaks. As these assets are underground and in remote locations, these spills can remain undiscovered for weeks—sometimes even months—silently contaminating surrounding environments and water sources.

Exposure to untreated sewage introduces dangerous pathogens into water systems, causing outbreaks of serious illnesses from gastroenteritis to hepatitis.

As evidenced by a recent underground wastewater leak in a marshland ecosystem in California, the environmental damage caused by pipeline corrosion can be far-reaching. Nearly 20 million gallons of raw sewage accidentally was released into a sensitive marsh, severely disrupting its ecosystem.The sheer volume of sewage continued to contaminate the marsh for weeks, altering the natural water chemistry and harming the aquatic life and dependent life forms. The full extent of the environmental damage can only be determined after containment and investigation.

Transforming Corrosion Monitoring with Satellite-Enabled Technology

To effectively monitor a pipeline, solutions must overcome multiple critical challenges: economic constraints of complete replacement are prohibitively expensive, internal degradation like corrosion that remains invisible until failure, geographic spread of pipelines across areas with low to zero cellular coverage makes current connectivity solutions inadequate. Manual inspections can be time-consuming, challenging and infrequent, leading to dangerous visibility gaps in pipeline condition. All these limitations result in a predominantly reactive maintenance strategy, where operators discover failures only after environmental damage and infrastructure collapse has already occurred.

Myriota’s satellite IoT technology is revolutionising pipeline management. Our ecosystem partner Corrosion Instruments have developed an ultra-low power corrosion monitoring solution that serves as a primary defence against pipeline degradation.

Key Benefits:

– No Connectivity Limitations: Myriota provides direct-to-satellite connectivity, this eliminates the need for connectivity infrastructure such as towers, enabling connectivity that works from anywhere.
– Long-Lasting Devices: Myriota-enabled solutions can be powered by AA batteries, operating for years without any external power, reducing the need for frequent and expensive trips to replace power sources.
– Cost-Effective: Our data plans are affordable, starting at just US$0.99/month/device, making IoT solutions viable to develop and able to scalable for widespread adoption.

Protecting Communities Through Advanced Corrosion Detection

For pipeline manufacturers and operators, effective corrosion monitoring represents a fundamental commitment to public safety and environmental protection. Many pipeline routes travel through densely populated “high consequence areas” where corrosion-related failures would directly impact residential neighbourhoods, schools, hospitals, and public infrastructure.

Corrosion monitoring solutions that utilise Myriota’s secure network not only help to safeguard public utilities and sensitive environments, but benefit from our dedication to security, ensuring that the critical data transmitted remains protected from unauthorised access or interception. Through this dual protection approach, partner solutions, councils and utility network operators gain consistent vigilance, even if they are far up or downstream, while maintaining complete data security throughout their monitoring operations.

Transition to Proactive Corrosion Management Today

The evidence is out: waiting until corrosion causes pipeline failures represents an outdated approach to resource management that exposes communities and the environment to unnecessary risks.

Ready to take your corrosion monitoring to the next level? Contact us today to discover how our cutting-edge corrosion monitoring solutions can transform your operations. By partnering with us, you can prevent costly pipeline failures, protect the environment, ensure public safety, and optimise your maintenance strategies.