Every drop that flows through an industrial pipeline carries with it a process; it carries risk. In industries like chemical manufacturing, oil and gas, and natural gas processing, acid corrosion silently eats away at the precision instruments that keep operations safe, efficient, and profitable. Emerson, a global leader in automation and process measurement, has spent decades mastering the science of flow. Now, the company is turning outward to invite innovators, material scientists, and engineers to tackle one of its toughest challenges: building the next generation of corrosion protection.
This is your chance to design a lining solution capable of shielding stainless-steel flow components from some of the harshest chemicals on Earth (sulfuric acid and sodium hydroxide) while meeting rigorous environmental and performance standards. The right solution could redefine what’s possible in industrial measurement, unlocking safer, more sustainable operations worldwide.
Winners won’t just earn a share of the $30,000 prize pool; they’ll gain a potential partnership with Emerson’s world-class R&D and manufacturing teams to bring their innovation from concept to commercial reality. Solving this challenge isn’t just about protecting metal; it’s about reshaping how entire industries flow.
Guidelines
Background
Emerson
Emerson is a global technology corporation that was founded in 1890 in St. Louis, Missouri. The company initially began as a regional manufacturer of electric motors and fans. Emerson's Automation Solutions segment is dedicated to helping manufacturers achieve industry-leading performance. Through its strategic growth, Emerson has acquired expertise and leadership in instrumentation, including flow and density measurement technology. Emerson provides flow products, including Coriolis flow meters, density meters, and viscosity meters, across its portfolio. Emerson Automation Solutions boasts the largest portfolio of flow products tailored to meet the installation demands for corrosive applications. The company has amassed more than 35 years of experience and hundreds of thousands of successful installations in such environments. To handle corrosive fluids, Emerson offers multiple wetted materials, including tantalum, alloy C22, and platinum, across its flow portfolio.
Coriolis
The License to Flow challenge focuses on protecting the internal components of Micro Motion Coriolis flow meters, which are crucial devices used to accurately measure mass flow and density. From these two measurements, the liquid volume flow can also be derived. The operation of a Coriolis meter relies fundamentally on vibration:
Oscillation: The sensor uses dual parallel flow tubes. When the process fluid enters the sensor, it is split equally between these tubes. A drive coil stimulates the tubes to oscillate in opposition to each other at their natural resonant frequency.
Measurement Principle: Magnet and coil assemblies, known as "pickoffs," generate sine waves to indicate the tube motion. When fluid is moving, Coriolis forces are induced, causing the flow tubes to twist in opposition, which shifts the sine waves out of phase.
Mass Flow and Density: The measured time delay, known as Delta T (ΔT), is measured in microseconds and is directly proportional to the mass flow rate. Simultaneously, the wave frequency of the oscillation indicates the fluid density. A change in liquid density alters the vibrating frequency of the tubes, similar to how a larger mass results in a lower oscillation frequency in a spring and weight system.
Problem
Acid corrosion presents a critical challenge in industries such as chemical manufacturing, natural gas processing, and oil refining, significantly undermining the integrity and operational lifespan of process control equipment, specifically pipeline components. Existing solutions, like tantalum-lined components, while effective against certain acids, are prohibitively expensive for widespread use. Alternative materials, including stainless steel, nickel alloys, and titanium, fail to withstand long-term exposure to aggressive corrosive environments. While options such as Teflon lining exist, Emerson is seeking innovative alternatives, as progressing regulatory restrictions on environmentally persistent compounds, notably PFAS, are limiting their viability.
Without an effective resolution, industries face escalating risks of equipment failure, costly downtime, increased maintenance, and potential environmental hazards. The ideal solution must therefore ensure superior corrosion resistance, mechanical durability, and environmental compliance, while being adaptable to complex internal geometries in Emerson Coriolis sensors, including bends, bifurcations, and diameter reductions, crucial to sustaining safe, reliable, and economically viable industrial operations. The coating must maintain strong adhesion under occasional pressure cycles up to 1500 psi and a temperature range from -50°F to 400°F across a 20–30 year lifespan, while avoiding imperfections that could lead to pitting or delamination. It must not alter sensor performance, such as by affecting vibrating tube behavior or introducing significant pressure drop.
The Challenge
Develop a robust, compliant, and cost-effective lining solution, including the solution’s application, for stainless-steel flow path components that reliably protects against sulfuric acid and sodium hydroxide corrosion, enabling a multi-year service life under demanding industrial conditions.
Rising to meet this challenge, you will provide a 10-page paper and supporting materials that describe your solution, its material, how it can be applied, and its projected performance. If selected as a winner, not only will you be awarded a cash prize, you will have the opportunity to negotiate a partnership/contract with Emerson.
The following requirements define a solution to this challenge.
Must-have requirements:
Your solution, at a minimum, to be considered for a prize, must:
Protect the stainless-steel base material from sulfuric acid corrosion and sodium hydroxide.
Application of the solution has an even coating, with a thickness variation within 0.010 inches of the average.
Prevent delamination even with occasional pressure cycles from zero to 1500 psi, and temperature cycles from 0°F to 150°F.
Prevent delamination under low frequency (< 1000Hz), low amplitude (<0.01”) vibration
Be compliant with REACH and RoHS and similar environmental standards.
Be resistant to abrasion, erosion, and mechanical wear.
Be applied only to the internal flow path surfaces; external coating is not permitted.
Desired features:
The following, if met, can result in a higher score for your submission:
Have an average thickness of approximately 0.020 inches. Thinner and thicker coatings are acceptable, provided they meet the even-coating must-have requirements, and conclusively meet adhesion and porosity targets, ensuring no pitting or flaws that would allow acid contact with the base material.
Offer flexibility for use across various component types and sizes.
Accommodate a wide range of flow path configurations in our Coriolis sensors, including bifurcations, diameter reductions, and curved flow paths. The product line includes flow paths from quarter-inch to six-inch diameters with 180-degree bends and Y-shaped bifurcations.
Be capable of passing industry-standard tests (ASTM G48 & NACE RP0274) for chemical resistance, adhesion, and mechanical durability.
Prevent delamination with under occasional temperature cycles from -50°F to 400°F
Demonstrate the elimination or minimization of PFAS or “forever chemicals”
How do I Win?
To be eligible for an award, your proposal must, at minimum:
Satisfy the Judging Criteria requirements.
Thoughtfully address the Submission Form questions.
Be scored higher than your competitors!
Your Submission
Your Solution: Describe your solution, its makeup, a clear explanation of your proposed material for the lining solution detailing how the material, upon application, will protect the stainless-steel base material from sulfuric acid corrosion and sodium hydroxide, the composition of the coating (e.g., polymeric, metallic, or hybrid coatings), its intrinsic properties that make it resistant to abrasion, erosion, and mechanical wear, and how it ensures long-lasting durability, even in dynamic flow environments with extreme conditions.
Material: A table of materials/chemicals used and their volume, discuss the viability and availability of the proposed materials for practical implementation, demonstrate a clear strategy for minimizing PFAS and ‘forever chemical’ compounds. Show the elimination or significant minimization of these substances, going beyond basic regulatory compliance. Note: Solutions with significant or unmitigated presence that pose unacceptable long-term environmental risks will not be considered for an award.
Application: Discuss the various applications of your solution, including details on the component types and sizes, and diversity of flow path configurations; demonstrate the versatility and adaptability of the application method, its flexibility for use across various component types and sizes, how it can accommodate a wide range of complex internal flow path configurations, including bifurcations, diameter reductions, and curved flow paths; How the application achieves an even coating, with a thickness variation within 0.010 inches of the average; Discuss any limitations the coating process has, such as minimum access size, Y-branch paths, or as-welded surface roughness (Explicitly mention its applicability to the full product range, which includes flow paths from quarter-inch to six-inch diameters, 180-degree flow path bends, and Y-shaped flow path bifurcations)
Performance: Discuss the impact and proposed validation testing of your solution; How it reliably protects against sulfuric acid and sodium hydroxide corrosion, enabling a multi-year service life; Its ability to maintain adhesion and performance under thermal cycling and operational stress; demonstrate how it is capable of passing industry-standard tests for chemical resistance, adhesion, and mechanical durability.
Supporting Documentation: Provide supporting documents, team resumes, an optional video, and CAD drawings – materials that help demonstrate all possible configurations of your solution and illustrate application thickness measurements at various points of application
Prize
A total of $30,000 USD in prizes will be awarded to the top submissions that best meet the challenge objectives and judging criteria. While the cash prizes recognize the most promising ideas, this challenge is designed primarily as a gateway to partnership and development with Emerson, one of the world’s leaders in flow and process measurement technologies.
Grand Prize: $20,000
Two Runner-Up Prizes: $5,000 each
Beyond the cash awards, top solvers will be invited to collaborate directly with Emerson’s engineering and materials science teams to advance their proposed solution toward testing and potential commercialization. Selected innovators could gain:
Access to Emerson’s extensive testing and validation facilities.
Technical feedback and mentorship from industry experts.
The opportunity to co-develop and scale a corrosion-resistant lining solution across Emerson’s global product portfolio.
By participating, solvers position themselves not only for recognition but for a potential long-term partnership, where their ideas can transition from concept to market-ready technology, improving reliability and sustainability across critical industries worldwide.
As a part of this challenge's shared IP agreement, Emerson reserves the right to contact solvers regarding their submission, solution, and intellectual property. This may include questions about your solution and potentially partnership opportunities for further work, development, or testing with Emerson.
Timeline
Open to submissions
November 4, 2025 9AM EST
Submission deadline
February 5, 2026 5PM EST
Judging
February 6 - March 5, 2026
Winners Announced
March 6, 2026
Judging Criteria
Section
Description
Overall Weight
Coating Quality and Consistency
To what extent does the proposed solution demonstrate superior coating quality and consistency, specifically in achieving an average thickness of approximately 0.020 inches (or suitable alternative), maintaining thickness variation within acceptable limits, and ensuring the complete absence of porosity or flaws that would allow acid contact with the base material, conclusively meeting adhesion and porosity targets?
35
Robustness Across Extended Operating Conditions
How effectively does the proposed lining solution maintain its integrity and performance, specifically preventing delamination or particulate generation across an extended operational temperature range (-50°F to 400°F) and under demanding industrial conditions, showcasing superior robustness against pressure and temperature cycles?
35
Application Versatility and Adaptability
To what degree does the proposed application method demonstrate versatility and adaptability for various component types and sizes, and effectively accommodate a wide range of complex internal flow path configurations, including bifurcations, diameter reductions, and curved flow paths?
20
Environmental Profile and Material Viability
How effectively does the proposed solution minimize or eliminate environmentally persistent compounds (e.g., PFAS or 'forever chemicals'), going beyond basic regulatory compliance, and how viable and readily available are the proposed materials for practical implementation?
10
Challenge Rules
Participation Eligibility:
The challenge is open to all adult individuals 18 years of age or older, private teams, public teams, and collegiate teams. Teams may originate from any country. Submissions must be made in English. All challenge-related communication will be in English.
No specific qualifications or expertise in the field of materials science is required. Prize organizers encourage outside individuals and non-expert teams to compete and propose new solutions.
To be eligible to compete, you must comply with all the terms of the challenge as defined in the Challenge-Specific Agreement
Registration and Submissions:
Submissions must be made online (only), via upload to the HeroX.com website, on or before 5pm ET on February 5th, 2026. No late submissions will be accepted.
This challenge allows only one submission per individual/team.
Intellectual Property Rights:
By entering, Innovator agrees that: (i) all Submissions become Challenge Sponsor's property and will not be returned; and (ii) Challenge Sponsor and its licensees, successors and assignees have the right to use any and all Submissions, and the names, likenesses, voices and images of all persons appearing in the Submission, for future advertising, promotion and publicity in any manner and in any medium now known or hereafter devised throughout the world in perpetuity.
All intellectual property rights, if any, and all inventions, patents, patent applications, designs, copyrights, trademarks, trade secrets, software, source code, object code, processes, formulae, ideas, methods, know-how, techniques, devices, creative works, works of authorship, publications, and/or other intellectual property (“Intellectual Property”) developed by Innovator as part of the Submission will remain with Innovator, subject to the following condition:
If Challenge Sponsor notifies Innovator that Submission is eligible for a Prize, Innovator will be considered qualified as a finalist (“Finalist”). Finalist must agree to grant to the Challenge Sponsor a royalty free, non-exclusive license in respect of all such intellectual property rights, if any, for the purposes of commercial exploitation of the idea or concept demonstrated by the Submission. Notwithstanding granting the Challenge Sponsor a perpetual, non-exclusive license for the submission, Finalist retains ownership of the submission.
Consolation Prize:
In the event that none of the submissions meet the Judging Criteria, the sponsor will award the following consolation prizes to the competitor(s) that score the highest:
Consolation Prize 1: $500
Consolation Prize 2: $500
Awarding of the Prize:
The Individual Submitter or Team Captain is automatically designated as the Recipient of the prize monies. The Individual’s or Captain’s name must also match the Authorized Person on the receiving Bank Account. No changes are permitted to the prize Recipient after the Submission Deadline date. If you wish to change who would receive the prize monies, those changes must be completed prior to the Submission Deadline. View our Knowledge Base article here for how to change Team Captains.
Judging Panel:
The determination of the winners will be made by a group of relevant subject matter experts.
Additional Information
By participating in the challenge, each competitor agrees to adhere to the HeroX Intellectual Integrity Policy and promises to submit only their original idea. Any indication of "copying" amongst competitors is grounds for disqualification.
All applications will go through a process of due diligence; any application found to be misrepresentative, plagiarized, or sharing an idea that is not their own will be automatically disqualified.
All ineligible applicants will be automatically removed from the competition with no recourse or reimbursement.
No purchase or payment of any kind is necessary to enter or win the competition.
When your material choice determines whether a system lasts three years or thirty, "good enough" doesn't exist.
A chemical processing plant in the Gulf Coast replaced corroded valve components for the third time in eight years. Each failure cost six figures in downtime, emergency labor, and replacement parts. The plant's engineers had specified 316 stainless steel, a material marketed as corrosion-resistant and used successfully across hundreds of other installations. In this particular environment, with its specific concentration of sulfuric acid, elevated temperatures, and constant mechanical vibration, the steel developed stress corrosion cracking. The solution? Switch to tantalum-lined components at nearly ten times the material cost.
This isn't an edge case. It's the central dilemma facing industries from petrochemicals to pharmaceuticals: the materials that can truly withstand aggressive chemical environments for decades are prohibitively expensive, while affordable alternatives fail in ways that are expensive, dangerous, or both.
The Deceptive Simplicity of Corrosion Resistance
We often treat corrosion resistance as a material property, like density or melting point. But resistance to chemical attack is entirely contextual. A material that performs flawlessly in one acid concentration will fail catastrophically in another. Temperature swings, flow velocity, the presence of chlorides, and even trace contaminants can transform a stable system into a corroding one.
For example, stainless steel resists oxidation beautifully in air and performs well in many mild acids, until you introduce chlorides or increase the temperature. Tantalum resists nearly everything but costs as much as a luxury car per cubic foot.
This means material selection isn't about finding "the best" material. It's about mapping dozens of variables (e.g. concentration, temperature, pressure, flow regime, mechanical stress, expected lifetime) onto a narrow window of materials that won't fail.
Flaws: Fails in concentrated sulfuric acid above 100°C, susceptible to pitting in chloride environments, vulnerable to stress corrosion cracking under sustained tensile loads.
Titanium:
Strengths: Excellent strength-to-weight ratio, outstanding performance in oxidizing acids, forms protective oxide layers.
Flaws: Dangerous in concentrated sulfuric acid (can ignite under certain conditions), poor performance in reducing acids, expensive machining and fabrication.
Nickel Alloys (Hastelloy, Inconel):
Strengths: Broad chemical resistance, good high-temperature performance, available in various formulations.
Flaws: Three to five times the cost of stainless steel, still vulnerable to specific acid/temperature combinations, can suffer from carbide precipitation during welding.
Tantalum:
Strengths: Near-universal acid resistance, stable across wide temperature ranges, inert in most environments.
Flaws: Ten to twenty times the cost of stainless steel, difficult to fabricate, limited availability, extremely dense (complicates structural design).
Why Time and Movement Change Everything
A material might pass laboratory immersion tests with flying colors yet fail within months in field conditions. The difference comes down to two factors that lab tests often underweight: time and mechanical stress.
Localized corrosion (pitting, crevice corrosion, stress corrosion cracking) develops slowly. A valve that sees 10,000 pressure cycles per year won't show pitting in a 500-hour test. But over five years, those cycles create initiation sites for cracks that propagate through the material. Industries that need 20–30 year service lives can't rely on accelerated testing. They need either materials with proven decades-long track records or they need to overdesign with exotic alloys "just to be safe."
Cyclic vibration compounds the problem. Materials that resist chemical attack can still fail from fatigue. The combination of corrosive environment and mechanical stress creates failure modes that neither factor would produce alone. This eliminates many materials that look promising on paper.
The Economic Trap
Here's the bind: capital equipment in chemical processing is often expected to last multiple decades. A reactor vessel specified with tantalum cladding might cost $2 million more than a titanium alternative. Then, if the titanium version fails after 12 years and requires a full plant shutdown for replacement, the total cost of ownership explodes. Insurance, lost production, and emergency procurement can dwarf the initial savings.
Yet most purchasing processes optimize for upfront cost. The engineering team knows tantalum is the safer choice, but the budget holder sees only the price differential. Therefore they specify the cheaper material, add "inspect annually" to the maintenance schedule, and hope the gamble pays off. Sometimes it does. Oftentimes it doesn't.
This creates a market failure. Companies that do pay for tantalum subsidize conservatism across the entire industry. Companies that gamble on cheaper materials either get lucky or externalize the costs through insurance claims and emergency repairs. Innovation in truly cost-effective, long-duration corrosion resistance would shift this entire dynamic but the technical barriers are formidable.
What This Means in Practice
For engineers specifying components today, every material choice involves trading safety margin against budget. For startups developing new materials or coatings, the bar isn't just "better than stainless”. It's "proven reliable for 30 years in conditions that destroy titanium." For industries trying to reduce operational risk, the shortage of affordable, truly robust materials forces continued dependence on tantalum and similar exotic metals, locking in high costs.
Don't forget to submit your solution to the Emerson License to Flow Challenge and help solve this problem!
When the path inside matters more than the surface outside, conventional coating methods fall apart.
A refinery operator in Texas once described a coating failure inside a flow component as "cancer from the inside out." The exterior looked pristine. But within the labyrinth of bends and bifurcations, the protective barrier had failed in patches. Some areas were just bare metal and others had a coating five times the intended thickness. Within months, corrosion had eaten through walls that should have lasted decades. The component had to be replaced at an enormous cost, and the failure mode was invisible until catastrophic.
This is the hidden engineering nightmare of complex internal geometries.
The Geometry Problem: Why Shape Changes Everything
Coating a flat panel is a solved problem. Spray it, dip it, or brush it, and gravity, surface tension, and line-of-sight all work in your favor. But introduce a 180° bend in a pipe, followed by a Y-shaped bifurcation, and suddenly things get complicated.
Inside these convoluted paths, coating materials must navigate sharp corners, flow around obstacles, and settle uniformly on surfaces that can't be seen or easily reached. The same material that behaves predictably on a test panel becomes erratic and uncontrollable when asked to cover a serpentine interior.
The problem compounds when these components range from ¼-inch diameter tubing to 6-inch manifolds. A technique that works at one scale often fails at another. Viscosity that's perfect for coating a narrow channel creates runs and sags in a wider section.
The Access Constraint: When You Can't See or Reach the Surface
Traditional coating processes assume access. However, inside a welded flow component with multiple branches and dead-end pockets, access becomes the primary constraint.
Consider these barriers:
No line-of-sight: Most internal surfaces can't be viewed during or after application
Physical limitations: Tools and applicators can't physically reach deep into complex assemblies
As-welded roughness: Internal welds create surface irregularities that trap coating material unevenly
Drainage paths: Excess coating has nowhere to go, pooling in low points
Many engineers discover too late that their coating specification was written for surfaces they could touch and see. The specification says nothing about how to achieve uniformity in a passage where human hands and eyes cannot go.
The Uniformity Challenge: Why Variation Multiplies in Complex Paths
A 20% thickness variation on a flat surface might be acceptable. But inside a flow path with multiple direction changes, that same variation becomes catastrophic. Here's why: coating behavior is path-dependent.
When coating material flows through a bend, centrifugal forces push it toward the outer radius. The inner radius gets less material. At a bifurcation, flow splits unevenly depending on downstream resistance. Material preferentially goes where flow is easier. Each geometric feature introduces its own bias, and these biases compound.
The result? Areas with no coating sit millimeters away from areas where coating is three times too thick. Both failure modes stem from the same root cause: inability to control deposition in three-dimensional space.
Surface roughness makes this worse. As-welded interiors have peaks and valleys that create local turbulence in coating flow. Material gets trapped in valleys and bridges over peaks, creating a porous, inconsistent barrier rather than a uniform protective layer.
What This Means in Practice
Industries that depend on flow components—chemical processing, oil and gas, power generation, water treatment—face a stark choice. They can over-engineer components with exotic alloys that resist corrosion without coatings, accepting massive cost penalties. They can accept shorter service life and plan for frequent replacement. Or they can hope that their coating process works despite having no real way to verify coverage in critical areas.
None of these options is satisfactory. The first is economically prohibitive for many applications. The second creates maintenance nightmares and increases downtime. The third is a gamble that often fails in the field.
The gap between what coatings can do on simple geometries and what they need to do inside complex assemblies represents a fundamental limitation in modern manufacturing. We can design intricate flow paths that optimize performance, but we can't reliably protect them from their operating environment.
Why This Matters Now
As industries push toward higher efficiency and more compact designs, flow components are becoming more geometrically complex, not less. Additive manufacturing enables shapes that were previously impossible to fabricate. These shapes inherit the coating problem in its most acute form. The ability to design increasingly sophisticated internal geometries has outpaced the ability to protect them.
Your proposed solution to this challenge could win a part of the cash prize and potentially lead to a partnership with Emerson!
This is your official reminder that you have two weeks left to submit your The Emerson License to Flow Challengesolution!
Please remember that we don’t accept any late submissions. It’s a good idea to get 75% of your project done a full week before it’s due to allow time for troubleshooting.
Now is also the time to ask questions and seek help. To ask a question, post on the discussion forum or comment directly on this post. We’re looking forward to hearing from you!
We are just 1 month away from our submission deadline for The Emerson License to Flow Challenge!
This message is to remind you to complete and finalize your submission before the deadline on FEBRUARY 5, 2026 at 5:00 pm Eastern Time (New York/USA). The HeroX platform is automated so your submission must be finalized before that date and time for it to be considered for the judging stage.
View a how-to video on completing your submission here.
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