Providing Long-term Corrosion Protection to Concrete Cooling Tower | Maryland
Services Applied by VCS Engineering
Summary
A power station cooling tower located in Maryland utilizes the brackish water from the Chesapeake Bay in the cooling process. As a result, the tower suffers from significant chloride contamination, reinforcing steel corrosion and major concrete damage. VCS Enginnering was hired to design a cathodic protection system to mitigate current and future corrosion activity of the structure’s reinforcing steel. VCS Engineering was also responsible to provide Quality Assurance (QA), as well as oversight and guidance for quality control.
Scope
VCS designed a cathodic protection (CP) system on Cooling Tower 3 to protect the reinforcing steel from corrosion. Cathodic protection was provided by two different types of systems, a galvanic cathodic protection (GCP) system on the supporting X braces and an impressed current cathodic protection (ICCP) for the tower shell.
Solution
The GCP system utilized stay-in-place fiberglass jackets on each of the tower’s X-shaped support columns, paired with activated zinc galvanic anodes installed inside the jackets to provide localized corrosion protection. For the tower shell, VCS designed and installed an impressed current cathodic protection (ICCP) system divided into multiple segments and control zones to ensure uniform current distribution throughout the structure.
The ICCP system is monitored through VCS’s StructureView® remote monitoring platform, allowing ongoing performance verification and proactive system management. In total, the system includes close to 50 monitoring zones within the cooling tower, all of which are actively monitored to ensure long-term corrosion protection.
