The need to conserve the world's natural resources and to prevent uneconomical use of energy has never been so apparent as it is today and the avoidance of wastage, resulting from corrosion, is recognised as one of the prime directions in which conservation of materials and resources can be improved. Generations of chemical process engineers have accepted corrosion as a fact of life, an incurable virus whose progress may be slowed bu t never stopped. Indeed much of the effort and cost involved in maintaining chemical process plant is spent on dealing with the consequences of corrosion. Unlike the measurement of some process control parameters such as pressure, flow, pH or temperature, it has not been possible to measure various forms of corrosion activity in real time, until recently.

The industrial plant corrosion engineer in the execution of his duties, has a range of tasks to carry out such as selection of materials, provision of corrosion allowances, selection and design of corrosion control techniques. On-line corrosion monitoring and surveillance, analysis of In service failures and estimation of remaining service life.

The last decade has seen a dramatic growth in the availability and use of corrosion monitories/surveillance and use of computers for data acquisition, data storage, data analysis and display. A notable advances have recently been made in the field of computer aided design (CAD) and expert systems. The impact of these new technologies in the field of corrosion research is beginning to be felt in the turn of the century.