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An Italian company offers a licence agreement for services for concrete corrosion monitoring and cathodic protection of reinforced concrete structures

Country of Origin: Italy
Reference Number: TOIT20170411001
Publication Date: 11 April 2017

Summary

An Italian individual company offers a service for monitoring concrete corrosion linked to chloride and for restoring the structure. It can be used for buildings as well as any infrastructure made of concrete such as bridges, car parks, tunnels and foundations.The main advantage is the prolongation of the concrete life-cycle with a non destructive procedure.The company is looking for a licence agreement with companies offering monitoring and restoration services for concrete structures.

Description

The company, whose owner has a long lasting experience in technologies for corrosion assessment and preserving concrete from external dangerous agents, offers different services to monitor and reinforce concrete structures and mitigate corrosion impacts.

Corrosion is a phenomenon of degradation of materials that produces a great impact from a social, environmental and economic point of view. Today, concrete is the most widely used building material in the world and corrosion of concrete structures has become a very important issue. Based on new researches, the methods previously used do not give sufficient guarantees and concrete structure owners must provide sufficient protection for these structures. The Federal Highway Administration (FHWA) issued a statement describing Cathodic Protection as the only proven rehabilitation technique to stop corrosion in salt-contaminated structures, regardless of chloride content in the concrete. By this approach, the company offers to conduct the following services for reinforced concrete structures' owners:



1. Corrosion assessment and life-time estimation of concrete structures using innovative approaches;

2. Providing corrosion protection systems based on using sacrificial anodes to protect reinforced concrete structures;

3. Evaluation of the behavior of cathodic protected reinforced concrete structures by assessing protection criteria and monitoring of current and voltage with high precision.



The service can be used on old and also new concrete structures and has been offered successfully in the countries of the Middle East. It is a novelty for the EU market.



The company is offering a licence agreement to companies that offer monitoring and restoring services for concrete structures. After a preliminary transfer of know how to the partner, the company will support the start up of the service.

Advantages and Innovations

The main innovative aspects of the company are as follows:



1. They use data based on kinetic approaches - the Galvanostatic Pulse Technique (GPT) and the Electrochemical Impedance Spectroscopy Technique (EIST) - instead of a thermodynamic approach to estimate the remaining life time of reinforced concrete structures;



2. They use a wide variety of non-destructive test equipment to assess the residual life of concrete structures; 



3. They have more than 15 years' experience in the industry, with 

scientists and professionals that have an established presence in the field.



The main advantages of the service are:

1.  low costs for monitoring and restoring concrete infrastructures (cost reduction can be 20 - 80% of conventional repair);

2. green restoration method with low impact on environment;

3. protection service works in chloride contaminated concrete structures regardless of chloride content in the concrete;

4. it is not necessary for extensive removal of contaminated concrete up to and beyond the reinforcement;

5. it reduces time required for remediation;

6. it removes the need for structural propping;

7. it requires no power source when using sacrificial anodes;

8. it has potential to be used in remote areas or where high calibre technicians are in short supply.



The needs that are fulfilled are:

1. helping infrastructure owners (buildings, etc.) to easily verify the corrosion status of their infrastructure;

2. helping infrastructure owners to restore their infrastructures without using destructive and expensive methods.

Stage Of Development

Already on the market

Stage Of Development Comment

The technology has been applied outside Europe.

Requested partner

The partners should be a company offering monitoring and restoration services of concrete infrastructure.

The partner should acquire the know-how of the company, learn the tools to be used. The company will help the partner to practice the startup phase of the service.