Life-Cycle Cost Analysis of Corrosion Affected Instrumentation System along with its Alleviation Path

Vol. 4  Issue 4
Year:2016
Issue:Nov-Jan
Title:Life-Cycle Cost Analysis of Corrosion Affected Instrumentation System along with its Alleviation Path
Author Name:Sheikh Rafik Manihar Ahmed, Vishal Sinha, and Vishal Sharma
Synopsis:
This paper explains the devastating effects of different corrosive gases on electronic instruments and details out its alleviation/mitigation path. Now-a-days all electronic instrumentation along with control and monitoring systems for industrial process control are based on NSMD/SMD technology including ICs. Many of the industrial process or during different process reaction of the plant, reactive gases are released which contains a particular amount (Ppm/Ppb) of sulfur, chloride or compound of sulfur and other corrosive compound. This sulfur containing industrial reactive gas combined with a high relative humidity and saliferous environment (i.e. salt producing or salt containing environment) can generate a harsh, corrosive atmosphere and also the presence of environmental gases containing [1] (such as NO2 , SO2 ,H2S, CO2 and Cl2 ) at particular Ppm/Ppb in conjunction with a certain level of relative humidity can have strong damaging effect on the control and monitoring and electronic instrumentation (such as PCB's, IC's, connector, contactor, switches and hermetic packages, etc.). An industrial reactive gas along with certain level of relative humidity accelerates corrosive reaction in electronic components of instrumentation system. This corrosive reaction in the electronic instrumentation containing electronic component results in decaying of Printed Circuit Boards (PCB) tracks, destroying of Integrated Circuits (IC's) and failure of control and monitoring system. For the protection of electronic instrumentation system from devastating effect of corrosive reactive gases and its compound, different mitigation plan have been discussed in this paper.