Systematic documentation of corrosion data can provide information whi
ch can help reduce costs and avoid corrosion causing safety problems.
General information on corrosion in desalination plants is supplied by
manufacturers, and owners who accumulate data from working experience
under certain conditions of operation and environment. Much of this i
nformation has been published in the literature based on theory, labor
atory experiments and some operating experience, but a data base is ne
eded to standardize and correlate the data so that a reliable generic
system can serve as a basis for extrapolation to specific conditions,
To handle the massive amounts of information, systematic recording of
operating experience requires an efficient data base system and an exp
ert system. At the Water and Electricity Department (WED) Abu Dhabi a
data base program, COREX, has been developed as well as an expert syst
em to handle special tasks. Several examples are presented which demon
strate the discrepancies between the knowledge of desalination plant o
wners, that of manufacturers and of that found in the literature based
on these two sources.