Aleksei Eresko, Deputy Minister of Construction and Housing of RF, Sergey Kropachev, Vice-Governor of Saint Petersburg, Evgeny Razumishkin, Vice-Governor of Saint Petersburg, Dmitry Nikitin, General Director of RESTEC Exhibition Association, and Sergey Voronkov, General Director of ExpoForum International, officially started the Exhibition-Convention «Rustproofing» as part of the opening ceremony of industry events, that are held simultaneously at the venue of ExpoForum, that is the XII Russian International Energy Forum and the International Exhibition «Housing and Communal Services of Russia».

Within the exhibition part, the specialists of the Russian companies exhibited new anticorrosive products many of which are unrivaled throughout the world. For example, a coating discharging static electricity made by Primatek GC; mobile devices for electrochemical treatment of stainless steel and alloys made by Steelox; a monitoring system functioning in the zone of circulating currents and utilizing them autonomously – a know-how of Neftegazkompleks-EKhZ SPA; a protective threshold device preventing leakages of protective current in grounding manufactured by Pipeline Systems and Technologies (PLST) – the world’s unique manufacturer of such equipment; corrosion process indicators made under the patent-protected technology in Russia only at the Stavropol Gas Fitting Plant «NS».

Great interest of specialists was caused by demonstration of operation of the laser metal surface cleaning unit LCU-2000 «Mendeleev Followers» presented by Khimservice.

At the Exhibition-Convention venue, ZINGA company has presented a cold galvanizing system ZINGA as an alternative to hot galvanizing and metallizing.

RUSMA demonstrated the national analogues of German chemical agents and unique own developments.

Zinker company held a series of traditional master classes on zinc-rich coating, that is applying zinc on metal for creating a protective layer.

The International Scientific and Practical Conference «Topical Issues of Rustproofing» gas become the key event of the Exhibition-Convention. The plenary session participants discussed establishing of the rustproofing specialists’ certification system and the need to unify the standards.

In the opinion of Pavel Stepanov, the Development Director – Head of the Personnel Certification Department of the Russian Register Certification Association, in the rustproofing area it is necessary to form a system of certification and attestation of inspector specialists, as FROSIO and NACE, the leading international companies in this field, suspended the issue and extension of their certificates. In this regard, Pavel Stepanov has drawn the attention of the audience to the training and certification program that the Russian Register Association already developed over 10 years ago. The inspectors trained under the program are highly-demanded in shipbuilding, construction, manufacture of oil and gas equipment, and the organization is ready to qualify the holders of FROSIO certificates on a fast-track basis.

However, there is no certification without standardization. This is a strong view of Artem Polosminnikov, the Director of the Standardization Center of ANO «Institute of Oil and Gas Technological Initiatives» (IOGTI). According to him, IOGTI has already developed over 200 standards regarding the basic equipment groups in close cooperation with its developers and manufacturers, as well as with the largest oil and gas companies, such as Gazprom, Transneft, etc.
 As the expert says, now the work is carried out to set up the unified standardization system in Russia, which takes into account the existing GOSTs as well.

Nikolay Petrov, the Executive Director of SOPCOR Association, the Chairperson of МТК 543/ТК 214 has also outlined the activities that are currently carried out in upgrading of standards under the supervision of ТК 543, which now constitute 108 regulatory documents.

Within the conference, a session «Protective Coatings and Corrosion Inhibitors» took place, where the national protective coating manufacturers reported on their own solutions in this field: zinc-rich coating technologies developed by Zinker; metallized sacrificial coatings made by Technological Systems of Protective Coatings (TSPC), which may be applied on the parts of any size and used both on the territory of enterprises and on-site; powder polyethylene coatings developed by Metaclay, which protect the pipes from corrosion and mechanical exposure, and other solutions.

Effective measures to prevent corrosion of the offshore facilities were discussed by the experts at the session «Electrochemical Protection and Operating Issues». Corrosion in itself bears the risk of facilities operation stoppage, which may adversely affect the country’s economy, but prevention of corrosion in aggressive media, especially in the marine water, requires special approaches and solutions.

According to the data of the Research Institute of Structural Materials «Prometheus», for 25 years, corrosion of the icebreaker plate in the north polar regions may reach 4.5 mm, while it is reduced to 0.15 mm in case the electrochemical protection system is used. However, 15% of rust processes occur due to exposure to microorganisms. «Bacteria just eat metal. And what they excrete, when they are stuffed, makes still more impact on the hull», notes Andrey Burkov, Advisor to the General Director of PSS Corporation.

The expert singled out five effective rustproofing methods in shipbuilding, which should be applied as a whole. This includes applying varnish and paint coatings, sacrificial protection using sacrificial anodes, active cathodic protection by applied current with potential regulation, protection of the propeller-rudder group, and protection from biofouling of the outboard water fittings.

Requirements to technical characteristics of cathodes, raw stuff and materials for making thereof, as well as other regulations for rustproofing of oil and gas pipelines, berthing and hydrotechnical port facilities will be recorded in the inter-state standard «Anodes of Cathodic Protection Units in Sea Water and Salt Media». The development of the said document was presented to the experts by Vyacheslav Pershukov, Deputy General Director for Development of Khimservice JSC.

«It is necessary to be very careful about the application of protective materials, because 90% of the Russian seas have winter temperatures of up to 3 degrees below zero. Protection must be provided all year round, and this factor will adversely affect their functioning and reduce the service life dozens of times», Vyacheslav Pershukov explains.

On the days when the industrial projects were held, the Business Networking Centre was operating on the ExpoForum venue, during which more than 1,700 meetings between the suppliers and the customers took place. Within the framework of the Exhibition-Convention, the individual meetings were held by the representatives of such companies as Gazprom UGS, Nizhnekamskneftekhim, NK Rosneft, Gazprom Gazoraspredelenie Kirov, Transneft R&D, Power Machines, Mosoblgaz, Samaraneftegaz, Samotlorneftegaz, Udmurtneft, Litum, Invaco and other organizations and institutions.

Business events of the Exhibition-Convention «Rustproofing» were attended by specialists of Gazprom Group, LUKOIL Group, Transneft, SUE St. Petersburg Metropoliten, RZD, shipbuilding plants of PO Sevmash, Zvezdochka Ship Repairing Center, etc.

Simultaneously with the Exhibition-Convention «Rustproofing», the ExpoForum hosted the XII Russian International Energy Forum and the International Exhibition «Housing and Communal Services of Russia». Due to parallel holding of three large-scale events, the experts from different economy areas were able to meet at the same platform for the maximum effective exchange of experience on the issues of conducting business in the essential industry branches of Russia. 

Primatech Group of Companies acted as the general partner of the International Exhibition-Convention «Rustproofing».

The event organizer is ExpoForum International.