A Networked Control System for Gas Pipeline Cathodic Protection

Cathodic protection (CP) is the most suitable technique to limit metal corrosion in pipeline networks. To preserve the effectiveness of the CP system, the monitoring of the potential distribution along the net is essential. In distribution networks, the pipeline potential is affected by environmental time-variant phenomena, which make it difficult to estimate the potential away from the measurement point. In this paper, a novel networked control system, based on fuzzy logic and an existing wM-Bus at 169-MHz infrastructures for gas metering, is proposed. The aim is the implementation of a low-cost system able to monitor and control the pipeline potential in a suitable measurement point.